- Most legacy software used by governments—including mission-critical transaction management solutions—isn’t equipped for the digital era.
- While many software solutions are masquerading as “cloud”, a modern user experience is a good indicator of a “true cloud” solution.
- What many innovative agency leaders know is a bad user experience can also erode the public’s trust.
Software built in the mainframe computing era features a decades-old visual design that makes it challenging for staff to complete critical tasks.
The screens and commands often require “how-to” manuals, passed down from employee to employee. In today’s era of smartphones and consumer-like software expectations, this is not an acceptable user experience.
It’s not just staff who suffer when mission-critical software is hard to use. Anyone who conducts business with government—whether it’s obtaining a business license, filing or requesting a recorded document, or paying taxes—must also struggle with the same outdated designs and confusing workflows (ever hit “cancel” when you meant to hit “next”?).
For businesses and constituents who must navigate these systems to transact with government agencies, the experience can be a befuddling time suck. A poor user experience can lead to non-compliance and even erode trust in government.
A Poor User Experience Exposes Solutions Masquerading as Cloud
An outdated “look and feel” or hard-to-navigate user interface usually reflects the reality that the solution is running on disconnected back-end servers that do not talk and cannot effectively support the work of modern government agencies.
Recognizing that times are changing, legacy software providers are repackaging their on-premise software and calling it “cloud”, but just because it’s accessible online does not make it a true cloud solution. Cloud truly means nothing to install, no on-site maintenance, or expensive custom development workarounds—only a browser is required.
A true cloud solution can also be identified by its modern user experience. Cloud software is developed iteratively with user testing and user experience designers playing an integral role in the development process to ensure that features and functionality are easy to understand and use by all.
True cloud software is also constantly evolving, with updates and enhancements automatically delivered to all users with each new release. With cloud, governments can expect frequent updates to the software and a consistent look and feel throughout the product.
Ensuring a Great User Experience for Your Constituents and Businesses
Innovative public sector leaders understand the risk of a poor user experience, and they are adopting user-centered design approaches and user experience research to focus on the best way to serve their constituents and businesses. New accessibility standards for web content and mobile apps will push all governments to follow suit.
Some agencies are implementing user experience research, which is really just learning how people use systems and how they would like to use systems, then making adjustments accordingly.
The simplest way to ensure a great user experience is to look for solutions providers who are building cloud-native solutions and investing in design and user experience research to ensure they are building and deploying software that meets the highest bar for accessibility and usability.
GovOS Introduces a New Design System for Its Cloud Solutions
GovOS recently introduced a new design system for its cloud platform based on user experience research. The result was a transformational new design system that improves the user experience across products and ensures that all new features and updates hew to modern design principles. The new design system features a fresh and accessible visual language for GovOS products to ensure that all products are intuitive and simple to use.
Software that is built in the cloud, like GovOS, makes universal design updates and new feature releases easy to deploy across applications, so all customers experience the benefits at the same time without paying for additional development hours or relying on internal IT partners.
Of course, design changes must be rolled out thoughtfully to ensure the result is a better experience for all users. The GovOS Design Team took the approach of implementing a new system over ad-hoc changes across products.
The new design framework will enable all new features to be released quickly to customers, promote usability and accessibility, and support scalability by ensuring that all new enhancements—across products—adhere to the highest user experience standards.
Learn more about the GovOS Platform.
