Heuristic Evaluation for Five Governmental Websites in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Government communicates with citizens through different channels. One of the most common channels is websites. There is no doubt that this communication is affected by the usability of those websites. Citizens would probably become confused or frustrated when a website lacks some core principles of usability. Thus, this study aimed to identify the usability problems of government websites. Specifically, it examined five governmental websites in Saudi Arabia by using heuristic evaluation. Eight evaluators assessed the five websites in terms of certain heuristics: navigation, interactivity, consistency, screen appearance, media use, and content management. The results showed that all five governmental websites had several types of usability issues. The recommendation of this study describes the importance of using modes (such as night reading and color blindness) and avoiding parallel translating for all pages.