UX Research in the Public Sector
My UX Research during the summer of 2018 was compiled into a final report that was given to government officials at The City of Ann Arbor. Feel free to view the copy here or scroll down for an interactive summary.
Abstract
This past summer, I worked with The City of Ann Arbor and Citizen Interaction Design at the University of Michigan for an intense, fast-paced UX research challenge. Students were placed in teams of 4 and given a problem statement from the city-government regarding voice interaction technology (VIT) and civic engagement. Our research included: acknowledging user motivations for public engagement, understanding user interactions with water consumption, identifying user needs and goals for water bill payment, and recognizing user attitudes towards voice interaction technology. After interviewing our city partners and analyzing survey responses from Ann Arbor citizens, we made affinity maps, a comparative analysis, personas, and scenarios to find connections in our data. Our recommendation includes a short term goal of utilizing voice interaction technology for city updates and water consumption inquiries and a long term goal of incorporating bill payment through VIT as a commonality among Ann Arbor residents.
Problem Statement
“The City of Ann Arbor is constantly seeking input from the community on new developments, policies, and programs. For example, the City is preparing to adjust rates for water, which will generate a lot of questions, suggestions, and concern from the community. How might a tool like Siri add value to the public engagement process around big community changes?”
Research Goals
ACKNOWLEDGE USER MOTIVATIONS FOR PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT
Because of Ann Arbor’s diverse community, we strive to illustrate multiple perspectives of citizen engagement by understanding how people acquire knowledge about the community and to show awareness of individual identities. How will defining reasons for public engagement allow us to improve our recommendation?
IDENTIFY USER NEEDS AND GOALS FOR WATER BILL PAYMENT
In regards to our problem statement, we want to evaluate how Ann Arbor citizens pay their utility bills, specifically their water bill, and how people would react to big community changes in the billing process and rates. When The City of Ann Arbor implements a tier-based water rate system, how will the citizens react and what do citizens wish for when paying bills?
UNDERSTAND USER INTERACTION WITH WATER CONSUMPTION
Inquiring about how Ann Arbor citizens recognize their water usage will allow us to pinpoint areas of development for a better recommendation addressing our problem statement. How will people’s knowledge and preferences of finding out their water consumption shape our end result?
RECOGNIZE USER ATTITUDES TOWARDS VOICE INTERACTION TECHNOLOGY
While City Hall is interested in the implementation of conversational interfaces, we want to uncover how citizens of Ann Arbor would feel about these interfaces and identify their pains and gains from using civic technology. Can we make connections between these attitudes to provide a proposal that supports both the users and the partner?
UX Research and Analysis Methods
- Surveys
- Interviews
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Affinity Maps
- Comparative Analysis
- Personas and Scenarios
Surveys
We designed our online survey to answer questions related to our problem statement and research goals. While many responses cited that VIT was not a trustworthy way to handle the bill paying process, we also received some responses that were more positive and shared that VIT would make paying bills more convenient. Further, by asking citizens who took the survey to report their age range, it became apparent that user attitudes and motivations were dependent on age. Specifically, we found out that young people used VIT at a more frequent rate and were more likely to use it to pay their bills than older citizens.
Interviews
Interview questions were created for Ann Arbor citizens to record the feelings and stories potential users had to share about VIT and their public engagement experiences with the city. Generally, users pay their utility bills online or it is included in their rent. Some users shared that their access to information regarding their bills is restricted by their landlord, who receives information from the city and often doesn’t relate it back to them. We also found that most responders have had good experiences using Siri and Alexa for asking questions, but are adverse to paying bills through those technologies due to accuracy issues.
Affinity Maps
We created two affinity maps to create a visual understandings of patterns in our data. The first affinity map outlined a hierarchy of themes to define our scope and context, whereas the second map displayed new emerging themes that helped organize our user research. These themes focused on age demographics, objectives for using VIT, and public engagement.
Comparative Analysis
We created a comparative analysis to discover how other organizations are currently solving similar problems. The analysis taught us their failures and successes and found ways to improve Ann Arbor’s water billing system. We compared direct, parallel, and innovative companies by ease/efficiency of use, type of technology used, and number of users.
Personas and Scenarios
We created two personas to understand commonalities between citizens in the same age demographic.
Because of the general hesitation toward voice interface technology from most of the people we surveyed and interviewed, we first created an older male persona, Frank Harris, that is involved with his Ann Arbor community and, ever since the Flint Water Crisis, he has become more environmentally conscious.
Our second persona is a younger grad school student, Carly Brown, who shares an apartment and is looking to cut costs. She represents a younger population that is open to the new technology. Carly finds the VIT helpful in her scenario to ask about a toilet leak.
Frank Harris
Carly Brown
Themes and Solutions
As we began to formulate themes between users, our recommendations adapted to typical users’ values, motivations, and concerns. The ultimate goal of the user is to pay their water bill most efficiently. However, many of our potential users are not yet comfortable with having their nancial processes handled by Siri or Alexa. Our findings suggest that there is a general lack of trust due to perceived accuracy issues users that users have experienced with VIT. Therefore, our focus shifted to how we could most effectively capture user participation on a platform to grow into potential VIT bill payments.
Our short term recommendation appeals to user’s current comfortability with asking VIT questions, whereas our long term recommendation appeals to how weperceive users will be interact with VIT in the future as adoption rates increase and doubts are dispelled by safety and accuracy developments.
Our short-term recommendations are twofold – one is for water consumption inquiries and the other is for city updates. Water meters at every house in Ann Arbor send data about each residents water consumption twice a day to a computer at City Hall. With this data and VIT, Ann Arbor can deliver answers to questions users have about their water consumption trends. We envision that users could ask Alexa or Siri how much water they’ve used in a day, the same way they would ask what the weather is. Our personas, Frank and Carly would benefit from this feature because it would save them money and conserve water. The entertainment value potential of this feature can be emphasized by the city. In a way, being able to constantly check water consumption may incentivize users to compete with other households to save the most water, and in turn, save themselves money. Moreover, voice interface technology could also provide answers to general bill inquiries and other city updates that affect bill payment. Potential users were found to already be familiar with using VIT to ask questions or makes searches, so there is a higher likelihood they will elect to use these features. Because we anticipate that users will be using this feature frequently either to ask about their water consumption or a bill inquiry, it is the ideal place to also communicate city updates.
The long term goal of our recommendation is to include water bill payments through VIT. We hope that the ease and entertainment users get from our short term goal will nudge them to consider paying bills this way. There are many benefits to this feature that users will soon understand as they become more comfortable with the technology. For example, since most users currently pay online, if they have a question about their bill they might need to open up different pages and tabs to find what they’re looking for. With VIT, they could ask that question to Alexa or Siri and get accurate answers directly from city sources and then go on to pay their bill in only a couple sentences. This could be particularly helpful to an older user like Frank, who may not be experienced with web searches, but could easily voice their questions to a device. Another benefit for users is the reduction of processing fees and late fines that are characteristic of paying on the phone or through mail. Finally, the city can reap benefits from bill payment through VIT, paying through this tool would reduce the amount of human labor the city dedicates to processing mailed in bills or fielding general question calls from residents.
