Skip to Main Content

Key findings from user interviews

Key findings from user interviews

Who we talked to

Methodology

  • 60 min remote video interviews with external users
  • 30 min remote video interviews with County employees
  • 37 interviews total
    • 19 external users
    • 18 County employees

External user characteristics

  • 11 users spoke another language at home (5 users were non-English speaking or ESL)
  • 7 users had school-aged children
  • 9 users rented vs owned their home
  • 5 users were local business owners; other job areas included: education, transit, healthcare, affordable housing, nonprofit, retired, cleaning/hospitality.
  • 4 users identified as having a disability (hearing, vision, dexterity)
  • 2 users completed the interview on their phone, 2 on their tablets, and the rest on their desktop or laptop computer

Findings and recommendations

Audience & county interactions

  • The audience are both residents, and those helping residents find information  (county staff, service organizations).
  • People are often stressed or angry when people come to the site or interact with the county, because the nature of what they need to do is negative (like a lien, paying property tax). The site should keep this mentality in mind when presenting information.
  • Individuals tend to have a harder time engaging with the county than community organizations. Though overall, people generally reported  great interactions with County staff.
  • There are geographical differences. People in West Marin generally have a harder time accessing services. The Canal community is very segregated and has more language access and resource needs.

Quotes

  • "Usually when you’re looking up things on this website, unless it’s entertainment, it’s probably something stressful (like money-related)."
  • "The county is great with partnerships -- proactive and responsive. But when there are individuals who are trying to navigate, there are definitely frustrations. People who don't have the capacity to navigate finding resources on their computer, they get lost."
  • "Every time that I’ve interacted with the staff it’s been fabulous."

Priorities/success

  • Success is fewer phone calls to County staff, because residents can find information on the website on their own.
  • For users, it’s most important that information is trustworthy, up-to-date, and easy to find quickly. Users currently don’t have a way to know how current most information is — we should consider adding a "Last updated" field to content pages.
  • Top needs/tasks include: assessing or paying property tax, finding County jobs, finding eligibility or information on housing/rental assistance, getting information on public health updates, finding Board of Supervisor meetings and agenda items, and accessing contact information.

Quotes

  • "Success would mean fewer phone calls from people asking about information on the website." -Internal staff
  • "The easier it is to find information, the better it is for everyone."
  • "I am a community advocate, so I need to update them with information like rental assistance and things that would help them navigate around their well-being. When I want to tell someone something, I want it to be accurate and updated."
  • "We need information about normal life – food stamps, housing."

Content & organization

  • Too much info + small font size = overwhelming experience.
  • Things should be ordered by frequency of use, rather than alphabetical. Not all content should have the same significance/priority.
  • Language and labeling choices need to be oriented towards external users. Residents shouldn’t need to know government jargon to find the information they need. Use plain language.
  • Most users are not going to the main County of Marin site for “things to do”. Yet some users want free services (like parks, libraries) to be better highlighted so that as taxpayers, they can feel like “our dollars are well spent.
  • People prefer getting email newsletters for staying updated on County news, rather than reading the “news” section of the website. Make it easier for people to sign up for newsletter updates on the site.

Quotes

  • "There are a lot of words. I know you’re trying to be very informative, but for my eyes, it’s too much. I get lost."
  • "People don't read walls of text. They just call instead." - Internal staff
  • "There's a lot of text with links. It's good info, but a best-in-class website would have less up top."
  • "Everything seems like it's of equal importance, rather than being oriented around what's important to users."
  • "The website is not optimized for people outside of the government to use."
  • "Not all of us have the dexterity and the language skills to navigate the current site."
  • "I've never thought to look at the county's website for local things going on."

Navigation & wayfinding

  • It’s hard to find things on the site. People default to search and have very little attention span for expansive menus. When asked to use the top navigation, users struggled significantly or failed to complete the task.
  • Search is very important and should be more prominent because users are usually looking for specific info (vs browsing). Currently, the search bar is too small, can't handle misspellings, and returns too many irrelevant results.
  • Even internal staff have had to develop work-arounds to find the information that people ask for.
  • Internal staff want to organize content according to their department, while external users want to find information without needing to know which department provides the service.
  • It should be made clear when users will be taken to another County of Marin site or external site altogether.

Quotes

  • "Finding the info is like looking for a needle in a haystack."
  • "I’m a smart person – went to grad school - and I can’t even find stuff."
  • "I represent immigrants, and groups who need services. It is very difficult for these groups to navigate the website."
  • "It's easier for me to read a google search result than the search results on the website."
  • "I have a lot of cheat sheets for how to look up certain things like parcel numbers and resolutions." - Internal staff
  • "Success is having services and information presented based on people's needs, not organized by departments." - Internal staff

Visual design

  • The design feels outdated and not friendly. Imagery and photos can help to make the site more friendly, but make sure those images are inclusive.
  • Easy-to-find information is more important than flashy visuals. While some users appreciated graphics, most cared more about the content and having a clear, clean design.
  • Font size needs to be bigger, even if we keep the font resizers. There needs to be more white space throughout to help it feel less cluttered.
  • The visual color design should be reconsidered. The blue is overused and does not provide enough contrast for older adults. It should only be used as a secondary color.
  • People appreciate icons and visual cues, rather than just bullet points. Use more icons to help people with wayfinding and to absorb the content.

Quotes

  • "When you look at the site, it's a lot. It's overwhelming. There's too much blue and not enough contrast between things." [She shared that she has ADHD and it's difficult for her eyes to track the site.]
  • "The stock images are all of white hands."
  • "A lot of stuff gets lost on the bottom. The working information is at the bottom. A lot of the ‘pretty stuff’ is just at top. While I love Frank Lloyd Wright, do we need this much space for the logo?"
  • "I prefer icons to photos because it feels less visually busy."
  • "It’s like you’re reading an old-fashioned website. It’s not interactive - very static. It’s a bunch of links on the left, and then there are another 100 things that show up. Make it more interactive."

Homepage

  • The homepage feels cluttered and overwhelming.
  • Users had mixed feelings about the background image.
  • Some users did not know how to get back to the homepage easily. Most do not notice the house icon, they use the back button or even go back to Google to get to the homepage.
  • Featured links is the most helpful section, followed by the calendar and payment center. The "newsroom" is the least helpful because the content is not comprehensive of County news, and not as up-to-date as other sources. Users do not realize that the calendar box is a carousel. Most users did not find the mobile gallery helpful.

Quotes

  • "The homepage feels overwhelming. There are a lot of visuals. I wanted to see the Featured Links first…not the banner first."
  • "Sometimes people call asking about things that are on the homepage, but they aren't seeing them, even when they are featured in the carousel (like property tax). I think maybe because it's overwhelming and there are too many choices on the page." - Internal staff
  • "The homepage is crowded and the number of links is overwhelming. Success on this project would be a cleaner and better organized homepage." - Internal staff
  • "I feel like the Featured Links section is the most important section and should be highlighted more."

Accessibility

  • Foundational accessibility features are in place, but could be better. Buttons are labeled but could be more descriptive in terms of whether it is expanding a section or opening a new page. Text resize is appreciated but could be more prominent.
  • Having better hierarchy/labeling in the navigation would improve accessibility by allowing people to easily skip over irrelevant info to find what they need.
  • Users wanted information about where to go for accessibility support (organizations, how to get benefits), rather than just reading about the County of Marin’s policy on accessibility.
  • Help people with hearing loss know what to expect by making it clear when events will be captioned or buildings/venues have hearing accommodations.

Quotes

  • "When I’ve gone to other sites, there’s a button that says main menu, but when you touch it with VoiceOver, or with JAWS, it'll say button, button, button. It's like, what is this button for?"
  • "It’s helpful that there’s information, but the amount of it is making it difficult to find certain things. If it was expandable, that would decrease the amount of time needed to find it."
  • "I found the information but it was confusing. It just keeps taking you to new pages. As someone with moderate dexterity issues, it was difficult to keep clicking new pages."
  • "There’s an ADA form and ADA grievance form. There’s enough to make sure they’re compliant. But it’s not friendly."
  • "I would click on ‘accessibility’ possibly because my husband's disabled. I would expect information for the disabled like how to get access to your benefits."

Language

  • The translation feature is currently not prominent enough in size and placement. Many users did not notice it until prompted.
  • The translation feature does not work on mobile, when those communities are often the most mobile-dependent.
  • The Vietnamese translation, especially for the menu, is not understandable to a native speaker. The Spanish translation is passable but not great.

Quotes

  • "The website is useless for the Viet community. The Vietnamese version is horrible. I tried to understand – but I’d have to go back to the English version to understand something."
  • [Re: Spanish via Google Translate]  "It’s kind of good, but not perfect."

Devices

  • It's important that the site works seamlessly on mobile for people who are phone dependent.
  • Users who need to share resources with others often visited the site on their cell phone so that they could easily text the link to their clients. They noted that their clients often don’t have easy access to computers.
  • PDFs are terrible for people who use phones or tablets.

Quotes

  • "My clients only consume information on their mobile phones."
  • "Two-thirds of people we work with are not tech-savvy. Texting/surfing the web is fine, but trying to find resources online is too hard. One-third might be okay with me sending a link."
  • "Loading the PDFs for the people who use a phone or tablet is difficult. A lot of the Viet community is using phones/tablets, and PDFs are very difficult for those users."

Internal staff needs

  • Internal staff want to be empowered to organize and manage their content more easily and without relying on IST for small changes. They don't want to lose functionalities as part of the redesign/CMS platform change. At the same time, external users need some consistency in navigation between department pages and the new site design should provide guidance on layout consistency.
  • Internal staff want more space for their content. They wished that there wasn't such a large margin/frame.
  • To internal staff, a successful website redesign would help users find the information they seek without needing to know specific departments, and that information would be free of government jargon. Hopefully this would lead to more positive interactions and experience on both sides.

Quotes

  • "I’m open to change as long as it doesn’t limit what I can do." - Internal staff
  • "Failure for this project is if a department is not able to get what they want on the site." - Internal staff
  • "I feel like there's a box that we're squeezed into [re: amount of space on the website]." - Internal staff
  • "I feel like I’m trying to fit a square peg in a round hole when trying to make the content work [for his dept]. The department has 5 divisions and it is difficult to display their separate areas." - Internal staff
  • "Success would be that everyone has access to what they need. There would be less phone calls because the information is findable. More visuals, requiring less words on the page, less need to read text and less scrolling." - Internal staff
  • "Success looks like a better use of the onscreen space. A more modern home page. Cleaner, clearer, less bulleted lists." - Internal staff

Ratings and task times

Average rating of current website

At the end of our interviews, we asked interviewees to rate the website between 1 and 10, 1 being the worst and 10 being the best.

  • 6.4 out of 10

Average time to find sample tasks

We timed how long it took users to find the following action items on the County website:

  • Paying property tax → 1m 2s
  • Rental assistance program → 1m 54s 
  • Calendar of events → 49s
  • Jail information → 54s

Rating of experience finding task

We asked users to rate their experience finding the following action items on the County website from 1 to 5, 1 being the hardest and 5 being the easiest.

  • Paying property tax → 4 out of 5
  • Rental assistance program → 2.6 out of 5
  • Calendar of events → 4.5 out of 5
  • Jail information → 2.5 out of 5