# Usability Conference Call

Monday, May 5

**Attendees:**

Bill Cosgrove - COTR, Service Center Agencies

Ron Butler- CCN, head of audience analysis/usability study on farmers

Brenda - (ERS), working with ERS\'s web based customer satisfaction
survey

Janet Osorio - RMA, Webmaster and head of usability study for her agency

Nancy Sternberg (OCIO) - heading up USDA\'s web customer satisfaction
survey

Marty Rodgers - eGov Team, eGov Program Management Office

Liesl Awalt -- eGov Team, usda.gov

Anthony Perry -- eGov Team, Farmers' Usability Study

**Janet:**

-   RMA is in the midst of usability studies.

-   Has contracted with UserWorks to test RMA\'s websites and online
    service offerings.

-   There will be 20+ usability videotapes available soon from RMA.

-   RMA customers include: Crop Insurance Agents, Media/Academics,
    Employees, and Community-Based Organizations, Producers.

-   Learned through usability studies that farmers want information
    based on their area or geographic location (news, information,
    weather, programs, etc. pushed to them.)

-   Farmers don\'t want to spend a lot of time online.

-   Some insurance agents are not supportive of RMA providing insurance
    rates/premium calculations online due to the fact that this limits
    the agent\'s necessity to interact in person with the customer.

**Ron:**

-   Has been conducting interviews/usability studies with farmers

-   Farmers typically don\'t have broadband connections. They typically
    use the Internet only once a month so it is not worth the money to
    them even if broadband is available

-   Many farmers connect at speeds of 28 k, so the site must not be slow
    to load

-   Farmers DO see value in doing things online, especially if it makes
    their life easier. For example, services that allow them to avoid
    going in person to the FSA office.

-   Do not want to see graphics-heavy sites or sites that are slow to
    load.

-   Farmers are very concerned about making a mistake while conducting a
    transaction online. Information needs to be worded clearly and
    labels need to be intuitive (e.g., legal terminology is confusing).

-   Farmers are heavily dependent on field offices and producers (cotton
    gins etc.). These groups perform many admin and educational duties
    for farmers, may be hostile in losing their role, and will be
    crucial transitioning farmers online.

-   Terminology such as \"Thunderbook\" and eFOTG do not make sense to
    the majority of farmers.

-   Overall opinion is that farmers are open to giving information to
    the government, in fact they would like forms to \"pre-populate\"
    with information.

-   Farmers would like to be emailed by government or linked to an
    application when eligible for new programs.

-   Farmers don\'t want to see the headlines/political topics on
    usda.gov; they would like to go straight to the forms/information
    that they need.

-   They are going to the usda.gov site primarily to do business. They
    want quick access to services/programs/applications/calendars, such
    as Field Guides, Resources, NRCS contacts, etc.

-   Taking a user down the wrong path is bad since connections are slow
    and they do not want to waste time trying to get to their location.

-   Farmers are used to AgWeb or magazine-type pages that are customized
    to them.

-   Farmers\' frame of reference for measuring USDA sites is private
    sector sites and/or university sites.

-   Farmers look for weather, markets, new programs, program dates, and
    price comparisons online.

-   Many users had not ever been to usda.gov, and chose instead to
    navigate directly to FSA or NRCS sites.

-   From usda.gov, users had a hard time finding agency sites.

-   NASS survey suggests that 41% of farmers use the Internet and of
    that 41%, about 20% have broadband connections.

-   All audience for this study was \"people who were likely to use
    online services\".

-   Even experienced users may have limited keyboard and mouse skills,
    indicating need to prepopulate

-   Farmers need 24x7 availability during busy seasons since they
    generally must work in the fields during the day.

**Bill:**

-   The three farm sites all look completely different. What message
    does this give to users?

-   Articles/policies don\'t link to relevant information, programs,
    user intentions.

-   On some pages you don\'t even know you\'re in USDA.

**Nancy:**

-   Nancy is coordinating the acquisition of the web-based customer
    satisfaction survey tool across USDA agencies.

-   Treasury has offered a good rate for agencies to sign up using the
    tool. With 10 agencies, the cost to USDA would be \$20K / survey (as
    opposed to \$30K).

-   NRCS, FSA, RD, FAS, RMA, usda.gov are all interested in using this
    survey.

-   Surveys provide good feedback/ammunition for Web developers.

-   ERS has a fully functional version of the tool now

-   Survey can be seen at
    [www.forseeresults.com](http://www.forseeresults.com/)

-   Tool allows for each contracted group to customize 4 or 5 questions.

**Brenda:**

-   ERS has already completed their first round of usability testing.

-   From that study, ERS learned that users want more data and
    interactive data tools. They want to be able to take numbers and
    manipulate them into useful views.

-   ERS has been pleased with the results of the web based customer
    surveys.

-   The surveys from ERS are fed up randomly to users who have navigated
    to a minimum number of pages on the site.

-   No mechanism in place exists to determine why people are NOT using
    the sites.

**Conclusions/Next Steps:**

-   How can we expand feedback activities to include the users who are
    NOT using online services and find out why they aren\'t using them?
    E.g., identify for targeted marketing studies.

    -   One opportunity for this type of interaction is the farm shows.

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-   How can we better collaborate/compile this information that we have,
    by audience group?

    -   Anthony will collect information on current efforts for a
        newsletter and the Enablers customer analysis.

-   Can we create a web-based knowledge management tool or (more
    realistically) \-- a database-driven Website that would store this
    type of information? It would be helpful to have this information
    available over the Web to educate senior managers in USDA.

-   How can we get webmasters involved, or bring this information to
    webmasters?

    -   Newsletter on usability

-   Update at Webmaster\'s meeting?

-   How can we expand customer analysis to include banks, food stamp
    recipients, etc.?

-   Overall attitude was that this meeting was helpful and we should
    continue to do this.