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Service Canada Website Test

Conducted by Chris5na Hough and Associates

November 11, 2014

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Table of Contents

I. Executive Summary 3

II. Testing Objectives 3

III. Methodology 3

IV. Findings 4

V. Recommendations 7

I. Execu5ve Summary

Christina Hough and Associates conducted usability on behalf of Service Canadas website team in Toronto on November 11, 2014. The purpose of this test was to assess Service Canadas website in terms of overall navigation and clarity of information, and particularly with regards to the new Special BenePits program for self-employed workers. Four users participated, each one performing tasks and offering feedback in half-hour sessions.

The test identiPied signiPicant issues with the navigation, though participants who were able to Pind the information generally found it reasonably clear. Issues included:

difPiculty navigating to the Employment Insurance section of the website from the homepage

difPiculty navigating within the Employment Insurance section tendency to become lost in irrelevant content

II. Tes5ng Objec5ves

After consulting with Service Canadas director, web editor and others, we decided that we wanted the tests to answer the following questions about the desktop version of the Service Canada website:

How do users interact with the websites main navigation? Are the categories clear? Are they able to Pind the information theyre looking for?

Will they understand what kinds of Employment Insurance benePits they may be eligible for?

III. Methodology

We contacted and recruited participants by phone, drawing from a user testing participant database. We booked half-hour sessions with four participants, which were held at our testing facility. During the session, the participant was asked to imagine that they were a freelance worker and complete a task on the website.

a. Participants

Participants were screened to ensure some level of ability to use a computer to navigate the Internet. We also eliminated participants who had worked in HR, or were for already familiar with Canadian employment insurance regulations that

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related to self-employment. We conPined our participant pool to within the ages of 19 and 55.

b. Task

Participants were given a scenario in which they had heard that freelancers could register for employment insurance, and given the following task to complete on the website:

1. What kinds of benePits do you think you might be entitled to if you register for EI? When could you apply to collect those benePits?

Users were Pirst asked if they had any guesses as to what the answers would be, then told to Pind the information on the website. If there was additional time, they were also asked to complete the following tasks:

2. Find out how to register. 3. Find out how much the premiums will be.

IV. Findings

a. Initial speculation about EI bene5its for self-employed people

We asked users to speculate about what kind of answer they might expect in order to gauge what kind of assumptions - if any - users would make going into the task, as well as how well they understood the task. Participants all started with some idea of how EI worked for employees, and usually guessed that benePits for self-employed people might include parental leave and medical leave. One wondered if they would be able to collect benePits if they went a certain time without paid employment, while others assumed that this would not be available to self-employed people.

b. Navigation from the homepage

None of the four participants looked for information via the main navigation across the top. When asked why they bypassed the navigation bar, they often werent able to say clearly, but indicated that their eye was simply drawn to the visible links towards the bottom of the page. From the main page, participants clicked on the following links:

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1. BenePits Finder under Featured Content. 2. Employment Insurance under Top Searches 3. Apply for Employment Insurance under I Want To (two people started here)

c. Determining whether their path was leading to the right information

Users who found their way to other benePits-related areas often wasted a lot of time determining that the page they were on would not meet their needs. For example, the user who began by navigating to the BenePits Finder tool (see below) spent some time Pilling out the questionnaire before getting frustrated and deciding that this would not be a useful way to Pind the information. Two explored the online application to receive EI benePits for some time before giving up and navigating back.

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1.

2.3.

Once sidetracked, users often had difPiculty Pinding their way out and over to the Employment Insurance section. Some used the back button to navigate back to the homepage, effectively starting over, while others turned to the sites search function. It was at this stage that users began to show signs of frustration. As one put it, This is why I would never go get unemployment insurance. I just know its such a pain

d. Understanding the information

Participants who were able to Pind relevant information under Qualifying for EI seemed able to understand the benePits and criteria listed there. One participant, who arrived at the Video Centre via search, was able to Pind most relevant information in the transcripts of the two videos covering parental leave and sickness:

(http://www.servicecanada.gc.ca/eng/video/sew.shtml and http://www.servicecanada.gc.ca/eng/video/sew_sick_comp.shtml)

This was not, however, a very efPicient method, and this participant decided she would probably call at this point, because she wasnt conPident in her understanding.

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http://www.servicecanada.gc.ca/eng/video/sew.shtmlhttp://www.servicecanada.gc.ca/eng/video/sew_sick_comp.shtml

V. Recommenda5ons

1. More care taken to organize the links appearing towards the bottom of the homepage. Participants overwhelmingly tended to gravitate towards the links on the homepage, bypassing the main navigation at the top of the page. We believe that these links, with their visible density of information, look more potentially useful to users. However, these links in fact led them along varied and rather haphazard paths, where they were often separated from other content related to employment insurance. We suggest that these links be categorized as carefully as the main navigation is, so that users can see all sub-categories relevant to them. It may even be best to remove them altogether and Pind ways to direct users attention to the main navigation.

2. Better breadcrumbs. Participants often became frustrated as they clicked through a number of links and felt no closer to Pinding the information they were looking for. Breadcrumbs can be useful here: they show where a user is within the website structure, and can help them orient themselves in cases where they have clicked a shortcut from another part of the website (as was the case with many test participants). Breadcrumbs exist on the Service Canada website, but do not always provide enough information; for example, the information in the top-right corner of the page shown below does not indicate that we are in fact in the Employment Insurance Special BenePits for Self-Employment sub-section of the Employment Insurance section.

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3. Add side navigations speci5ic to each subsection, such as the Employment Insurance subsection. Test participants had signiPicant difPiculty navigating to a more relevant page within the EI subsection. An EI-speciPic side navigation would allow users to see all the subcategories from any page within the Employment Insurance section, so they could quickly determine whether another page would better meet their needs, and easily navigate between different but related content.

4. Ensure that all relevant content is grouped together. Group content by topic, not by content type. One user arrived at EI information located in the Video Centre section, but was not able to easily Pind her way to other content related to EI. Few users will be looking for a complete list of videos on the website; more often, they will be looking for complete information on a particular topic.

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