The Data Doesn't Lie—An Approach for Form Usability Evaluation Based on Data Quality

Halsbenning Sebastian, Scholta Hendrik, Niemann Marco

Abstract

Forms are essential for service delivery in public administrations as they enable the exchange of data between citizens and the administration. Although administrations rely on an adequate quality of the data transmitted through forms for their decision-making, unfortunately, the data are often of unsatisfactory quality, which can usually be traced back to the data sources: forms. Current research on form design is aligned with the needs of citizens while disregarding the relationship between forms and the administration’s data quality. However, addressing this relationship can be beneficial to indicate further weaknesses in form design. Therefore, in this research-in-progress paper, we consider both form design and data quality. We follow a design-oriented research approach to address the following research goal: Design of metrics for evaluating the fulfillment of usability guidelines for form design using data submitted through forms. Hence, we investigate which form design guidelines are suitable for being evaluated through submitted data and their quality, and we present first metrics. The evaluation of the metrics is part of future work. Our paper is a first step to theoretically relate data quality dimensions and form usability guidelines. Public administrations can use our metrics to further improve their forms.

Keywords
Form Design, Data Quality, Digital Government, Human-Computer Interaction, Usability