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Singapore Government Web Interface Standard Project
IDA develops, promotes and regulates info-communications in Singapore, with the aim of establishing Singapore as one of the world's premier infocomm capitals. To nurture an internationally competitive infocomm industry, IDA offers a comprehensive range of programmes and schemes for both local and international companies.
The objective of the Web Interface Standard (WIS) is to establish a common web interface and design standard, and best practices for Singapore government websites.
The standard should include guidelines that facilitate ease of navigation, information retrieval, and online government service access. The standard should also help to build a consistent online brand for the governments and its agencies.
Our primary objective was to assist IDA in drafting the WIS.
MicroUsability assisted IDA in the drafting of the WIS. The project included reviewing literature and government websites, setting usability goals, creating guidelines (e.g., branding and information architecture).
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Stakeholder Meetings |
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Met with the IDA stakeholders to establish short and long term project goals.
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Literature Research |
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Studied literature on existing web interface standards from online and offline sources. |
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Website Analysis |
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Reviewed several representative government websites (with the gov.sg extensions). Their similarities and differences were assessed, and scalability issues were studied. |
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Usability Goal Setting |
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Set the usability goals.
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Technical Assessment |
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Assessed the implementation issues.
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Generated Guidelines |
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Created the branding, information architecture, graphic design and accessibility standards and guidelines. |
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Implementation Plan |
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Recommended a phase-wise plan for the WIS implementation. |
FIG 1: Web Interface Standard (WIS) proposed by MicroUsability consists four panels - the global eCitizen masthead, the agency website identity panel, the agency global navigation panel and the footer panel.
FIG 2: Global eCitizen Masthead
- The eCitizen logo would link to the eCitizen homepage (www.ecitizen.gov.sg). Rolling the cursor over the logo would reveal the ALT text "Go to the eCitizen homepage".
- A-Z Government Directory would be a link to the A-Z government directory in the eCitizen website.
- My.eCitizen would a link to the My.eCitizen section in the eCitizen website. If a user has logged in My.eCitizen before visiting an agency's website, clicking on the My.eCitizen link would take him to his personalized My.eCitizen homepage.
- The language and font size option (on the right side of the global eCitizen masthead) allows a user to change the language of the web page and the size of the text to suit his/her viewing preferences.
- The lion head symbol provides a unique international identity and authenticity to all Singapore government websites. It would be a link to the Singapore Government Online Portal (www.gov.sg). Rolling the cursor over the symbol would reveal the ALT text "Go to Singapore Government Online Portal"
FIG 3: Agency Website Identity Panel
- Agency logo area would contain an agency's logo, baseline and other corporate identity elements such as its full name, emblem and mascot, etc. An agency's logo would be a link to the agency's homepage in all the web pages, except the homepage.
- 'User control panel' would contain links to contact information, feedback and sitemap.
- In the search panel, a simple search box would be provided. Each search execution would initially be carried out within the website. In the search result page, a user may be given an option to search in all government websites. Advance search functionality would be kept at the discretion of individual agencies, as they would know their content modalities the best.
FIG 4: Agency Global Navigation Panel would contain links to all major sections of an agency's website.
- The sections would be grouped into three chunks.
- Mandatory links: "Home", "About Us", "Services".
- Links of other sections: An agency can provide links to other frequently accessed sections such as programs and Publications, News, FAQs, etc. The agency can choose the links, their orders and labels.
- If any web page (other than the homepage) is so long that the agency global navigation panel cannot be seen in a web browser window, the panel would need to be displayed again at the bottom of the page.
FIG 5: Footer panel (Applies to an agency's homepage only) would provide legal notices, copyright information and mandatory logos. The standard dimension of the logos would be prescribed. If the logos would be links, ALT text would be needed.
- Extend the WIS to websites using the edu.sg and org.sg extensions.
- Further research to create the information architecture standards
- Usability testing
"MicroUsability has helped us to kickstart the Web Interface Standards project by drafting the initial recommendations and the basic website design & layout, based on common usability principles." - IDA
Recommendations on the WIS and implementation guidelines.
About three months
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