Information Seeking and the Government

1. Information Seeking and the Government An Examination of the White House’s website

2. www.whitehouse.gov • The purpose of the site is to provide the general public with information concerning President Obama, the United States government, and central political issues • This site could, potentially, have an enormously diverse target group—considering its nature • My target group: two females between the ages of 18-24, and one female, age 44 • None had ever visited the website • Each had advanced computer experience

3. The Tasks • The tasks I devised for my target group range from simple to moderately challenging • This experiment is designed to test the overall ease of use of the White House’s website, and the extent of detail it provides on various topics • Task #1: Locate a list of the cabinet members. Is biographical information for any provided directly on the White House website? • Task #2: Locate information regarding the upcoming 2012 Easter Egg Roll • Task #3: Locate pictures/tours of the White House

4. Results • Though each member of my target group quickly completed each task (1-3 mins.), the way in which they did so varied • Two out of three used the top navigation bar to locate the answers, while the third target user used the tool bar at the bottom of the homepage • The third user, who navigated via the bottom tool bar, encountered the most difficulty out of my three target users; first she was disoriented by the multitude of photos that were brought up from the “Photo Galleries” link. • She had less trouble locating information on the Easter Egg Roll and White House tours, but again it took her the longest out of the three users I surveyed, since her primary means of navigation was the bottom tool bar. She attempted to locate the cabinet members last, and this took her the least time because she was now accustomed to the layout of the website. After the exercise I demonstrated why it was more useful to utilize the top search bar first.

5. Merits • The overall attractiveness of the site: each user noted the visual appeal of the interface, one user describing it as “clean and crisp” • Pictures: My other two target users actually enjoyed the pictures featured on the website, in particular those of past Easter Egg Rolls • All three determined that the site was rather easy to navigate; even though my third user experienced trouble initially, she quickly acclimated herself. • I had predicted that the top navigation bar may confound my users, since heading such as “The White House” and “The Government” are somewhat vague, but my two users who made use of the top tool bar simply scanned through each header for the data applicable to my tasks

6. Improvements • Glitches: When I ran through the task first, before testing my users, the “Photos and Video” heading was malfunctioning, for when I clicked the sub header “Photo Galleries,” nothing was retrieved. I tried it again several times. After waiting about an hour, it was working once more. This leads me to question how often the site encounters such glitches. • Biographic Information: The reaction shared by all of my target users was their confusion as to why there was no biographical information for the cabinet members directly on the site. Instead, one is required to navigate to another website entirely, namely the area of government that cabinet member resides over, such as the Department of State for Hillary Clinton. All agreed this should be remedied. Even a brief description of the individual would suffice. • Navigation Bar: Though I personally had no problem discerning that the top navigation bar was indeed a navigation bar, because my third user did, I believe the designers of the site could do more to highlight the bar—like enlarge the font size—so future users aren’t hindered by the same issue.