The Usability State of Nine Public Self-Service Applications in Denmark

Empirical usability research have documented usability problems in public websites and self-service applications. This paper uses data from usability evaluations of nine Danish public self-service applications from six self-service areas by five different self-service providers, to examine similarities in the usability problems found across self-service applications. The study found that the types of usability problems are present across self-service applications, self-service areas, and self-service providers. However, it is also found that the total number of problems have decreased significantly in the self-service applications that were usability evaluated in 2016. In this paper, we have shown that though the amount of found usability problems is significantly lower, three types of usability problems were present in both old and new self-service applications. These general types were button placement, attaching of files, and meaning of concepts.