Government’s Responsive Web Pages
Mei-Hsueh Yang
Professor, Department of Graphic Arts and Communications, National Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan (R.O.C.)
E-mail: [email protected]
Yu-Husan Chang
Graduate Student, Department of Graphic Arts and Communications, National Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan (R.O.C.)
E-mail: [email protected]
Keywords: Block Items; Government Website; Responsive Web Design
【Abstract】
With the increasing popularity of mobile devices, responsive web pages that can be adapted to various devices have been addressed, driving government’s websites to combine with responsive web design. The main purpose of this study is to investigate people’s opinion about the display of block items on different devices in terms of the responsive web pages of county (city) government in Taiwan. According to relevant literature, the navigation information is mostly put in the header or footer section of the page; the content service generally includes eight blocks:
county (city) information, agency information, announcements, administrative information, instant messages, related links, public services, and public opinion exchange. Through the Internet, there are 472 valid questionnaires collected. The results demonstrate the majority of people consider that most of the block items should be displayed in responsive web pages of county (city) government in Taiwan, but there are diverse views about how to display those block items on different devices. The open‐ended questions even report that people think that convenient and immediate service items should be provided. Finally, based on the results, this study offers some suggestions for practice and follow‐up research in related fields.
DOI: 10.6245/JLIS.202004_46(1).0002
【Long Abstract】
Introduction
With the increasing popularity of mobile devices, responsive web pages that can be adapted to various devices have been addressed, driving government’s websites to combine with responsive web design. In regard to this issue, The National Development Council (2015) included responsive web design in the regulations of government’s web layouts and contents management. However, the screen size of computers, tablets and mobile phones varies from one to another so that the items displayed by responsive web pages would be also different. In the face of the massive information, how the government should choose the presentation for its content and services to build a more friendly government website is an issue worthy of further study.
This study proposes a method for dividing government’s responsive web pages in order to integrate the block items on the homepage of the website and to discuss people’s opinion about the display of each block item on different devices under the structure of responsive web design. The framework of block items for responsive web pages would help to define the homepage structure for the government’s website as well as follow-up in-depth research. In terms of practice, it also provides the government with the references to future planning and constructing responsive web pages.
Method
The purpose of this study is to understand people’s views on whether the block items in Taiwan county (city) government’s responsive web pages should be displayed, and to compare people’s opinion about these block items on different devices. Echoing the purpose, this study divides the structure of government’s responsive web pages into two parts by function: navigation information and content service. With the further reference to the research of Roudaki et al. (2015), based on the use of the block, the navigation information includes header and footer; the content service is classified into county and city information, agency information, announcements, administrative information, instant messages, related links, public services, and public opinion exchange.
The research method of this study is questionnaire survey, and the questions listed are all based on the structure of the study. There are three parts in this questionnaire. The first part is about navigation information block items, 13 questions in total; the second part is about content service block items with 37 questions. All the questions are measured by the Likert scale, from “not necessarily displayed” (1 point) to “must display” (5 point). As regards displaying devices, according to Lestari et al. (2014), computers, tablets, and mobile phones are taken into consideration. The Cronbach’s α is used to measure
the consistency and stability of the questionnaire results, and the Cronbach’s α coefficient of each variable and the whole is higher than 0.8.
In addition to closed questions, an open-ended question is added at the end of each block for participants to answer at their will. The third part is about basic personal data, including gender, age, education level, occupation, mostly using which device to surf the Internet, and whether the subject has ever used the websites of Taiwan’s county (city) government.
Results
There are all together 472 valid questionnaires in this study. Most of the participants are female (64.2%) and students (62.1%), aged between 21 and 30 (73.9%), with an education background of university or college (60.4%). The most commonly used devices to surf the Internet are mobile phones (62.1%), and most people (82.4%) have used county (city) government’s websites.
People’s Views on Various Block Items
This study demonstrates that for navigation information, the name of the agency gets the highest score in terms of header block, and the contact information of the agency does the same in the section of footer block; specifically, the scores for the devices being discussed ( computer, tablet, and mobile phone) are all higher than the average value of 3 (between 3.05 and 4.65). It thus can be inferred that people think that the block items of navigation information in Taiwan’s county and city government’s responsive web pages should be displayed on different devices.
For the block display of content service, the county (city) development, affiliated agency introduction, latest news, administration plans, traffic information, related service websites, social welfare and service line gain the highest scores. Only the other county (city) websites in the link information is below the average. It can be seen that people think most of the block items of the content service should be displayed on the responsive web pages anyway.
People’s Contrasting Views about Block Display on Different Devices
The results of this study show that there is a significant difference between the navigation information blocks displayed by different people on different devices and the content service blocks. In the two parts of the navigation information and content services, the scores of the “computers” in each block are higher than “tablets” and “mobile phones”. In addition, there is no significant difference between the score of tablets and mobile phones in each block, which indicates people think the information that should be displayed in tablets and mobile phones is similar.
Considering the popularity of mobile phones and its limited layout, based on the results, the ranking of blocks in government’s responsive web pages and the top three that should be displayed on the mobile phones are shown in Table 1, and this can be served as the reference to the ranking prioritization of block items.
Table 1 Matrix of the top three items in each block on the mobile phone Item
Block First Second Third
Part I Navigation Information
header first agency name website navigation menu
commonly used functions
footer second contact information of the agency
accessible mark footer navigation menu
Part II Content Services
announcements first latest news activities public affaires
public opinion exchange second service line opinion mailbox frequently asked questions public services third social welfare employment service medical hygiene
administrative information
fourth administration plans legislation statistic data
instant information fifth traffic time and calendar weather agency information sixth affiliated agency
introduction
organization job position
related links seventh related service websites affiliated agency websites
supervising agency websites
county (city) information eighth County (city) development Demographic structure
geography and climate
Other Views about the Block Display of Responsive Web Pages
From the open-ended questions of both navigation information and content service, it can be inferred that people’s need for other service on government’s websites have the characteristic of convenience and immediateness. For convenience, people think there should add FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) and shortcut functions for navigation information section. In terms of instant service, people believe that it is necessary to display information such as emergency notice, online streaming for video conferences, special festival activities of the day, current flow of people in the agency, and reservation service.
Conclusion and Future Works
According to the results of this study, block items in both navigation information and content service are important to the public in terms of service and functions. Therefore, most of the block items should be displayed in the county (city) government’s responsive web pages. Another point is that people’s views about block display vary from different devices. They think the items displayed on the computer should be more than those on the tablet and mobile phone.
This study suggests that government’s websites keep the core block items on different devices and provide more personalized service for the public to choose which block item to be presented. Follow-up researcher can further investigate the display and variety of web page layout in government’s responsive web page design as well as the impacts of its presentation on the usability of websites.
【Romanization of references is offered in the paper.】