Design criteria for public e-services

This paper focuses on design criteria for public e-services. The paper challenges traditional lists of usability criteria supporting design and evaluation of IT-systems. Traditional criteria within the field of human-computer interaction are perceived as too limited and an expanded view of the communication and business process is proposed. Within this expanded view, existing usability criteria are considered as important but not sufficient. Based on this claim, criteria also supporting communication and business actions are proposed. The proposed criteria are generated from an empirical study concerning a development of an e-service. The aim of this e-service is to support the communication between companies and the municipality when companies are going to get permission for running business. Analysing the communication need in this context has been of particular interest in order to generate complementary criteria for design and evaluation. Examples of criteria generated are: good conditions for users to become knowledgeable (support for perception, comprehension and information), differentiate between informative and performative parts, provide meta information (purpose and content).