Usability problems and lines of solutions: an expert evaluation of Chilean online services

The growing offer of online public services aims to provide huge benefits to users in terms of time and facilities, and also to governments in terms of money saving. However, the benefits that both users and providers could extract from the digitalization of transactions are commonly affected by the problems that citizens face while using the facilities. It is at this point where usability appears as a central variable. In order to face this issue, we conducted a heuristic evaluation for assessing the usability of 60 online public services provided by the Chilean Government, and we proposed lines of improvement based upon the evaluation. Results show three main usability problems of the online services: (1) the system does not provide control to users over their action, (2) the services are structured in a way that produces uncertainty, and (3) there is not guidance to users while they conduct the transactions in the website. We propose lines of intervention for the online services in order to achieve desirable usability standards and reduce then the difficulties and distrust that people may face when shifting from in-person to online governmental attention. This demonstrates that usability can be an important variable when explaining the slow growing and lack of confidence that online services have among users.