Exploring user participation approaches in public e-service development

Government Information Quarterly 29 (2012) 158–168

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Government Information Quarterly journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/govinf

Exploring user participation approaches in public e-service development Fredrik Karlsson a, b,⁎, Jesper Holgersson b, Eva Söderström b, Karin Hedström a, b a b

MELAB, Swedish Business School, Örebro University, SE-701 82 Örebro, Sweden Informatics Research Centre, University of Skövde, SE-541 28 Skövde, Sweden

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Available online 15 February 2012 Keywords: E-services E-government E-service development User participation Method rationale

a b s t r a c t It has been argued that user participation is important when public authorities develop e-services. At the same time there is limited research on the usefulness of existing user participation approaches in public e-service development. In this paper we, therefore, analyze how the three user participation approaches – participatory design, user-centered design, and user innovation – meet the strategic e-service goals of the EU and the US. In doing so, we identify three challenges that need to be considered when choosing among these approaches: 1) unclear user target segments can impede the fulfillment of usability and relevance goals, 2) the nature of participation can impede the fulfillment of democracy goals, and 3) lack of adequate skills can impede the fulfillment of efficiency goals. © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction Today, it is common for public authorities to encourage citizens to carry out complex transactions using public electronic services (eservices for short). E-services are an increasingly adopted channel for citizen–government interaction (e.g. Rowley, 2006), and egovernment has advanced from the early phase of information publication (Layne & Lee, 2001) to service development. When e-services are introduced as part of e-government, they are often viewed as a way to automate internal, and manual processes (Asgarkhani, 2005), in order to reduce cost and time for providing public services (Anthopoulos, Siozos, & Tsoukalas, 2007). In addition to efficiency goals, the empowerment of citizens, and their satisfaction with the services provided are also promoted in e-government policies (e.g. Altameem, Zairi & Alshawi, 2006; Commission of the European Communities, 2006). But it is important to recognize that the goals in such policies should have implications not only with respect to the results of using e-services, but also in advancing how these e-services are developed. Today, an intensified customer orientation is found in today's public management (Schedler & Summermatter, 2007). It is elementary to have knowledge about different user groups' needs, skills, and technological environment. In other words, as a systems developer it is important to understand the tasks to support and the special user populations to make sure that users do not reject the developed e-services (Verdegem & Verleye, 2009). Melin et al. (2008) have

⁎ Corresponding author at:MELAB, Swedish Business School, Örebro University, SE-701 82 Örebro, Sweden. Fax: + 46 19 33 25 46. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (F. Karlsson), [email protected] (J. Holgersson), [email protected] (E. Söderström), [email protected] (K. Hedström). 0740-624X/$ – see front matter © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.giq.2011.07.009

shown that such knowledge brings positive effects when e-services are deployed. This confirms the extensive research on user participation in, for example, the systems development field (Cavaye, 1995), where these concerns have been present and debated for several decades (Markus & Mao, 2004). Given the extensive research in the field of systems development and human computer interaction on user participation, it is surprising how few influences we find in the discussion on user participation for e-service development. So far, most e-government research on user participation has focused on the much broader concept of eparticipation (e.g. Lourenço & Costa, 2007; Macintosh, 2006; Sæbø, Rose, & Flak Skiftenes, 2008). Axelsson et al. (2010) is a notable exception when they explicitly incorporate existing systems development wisdom into e-service development research. They pinpoint a number of challenges with citizen participation. However, they choose not to discuss specific user participation approaches (they use the term “school”) found in the systems development and human computer interaction literature. Consequently, this is a limitation, since user participation can mean many things (Heeks, 1999), and includes a multitude of methods and techniques. Consequently, it is important to consider which user participation approaches are available for systems developers to implement the macro-level goals found in egovernment policies (Colebatch, 2007). This toolbox affects how policies can be translated into practice (Hardy & Williams, 2008). Moreover, existing research has shown that user participation is not a panacea and a number of challenges have been reported (see Kujala, 2003). In a critical review of participation, Heeks (1999) argues that participation shall not be used without considering the political and cultural context. Consequently, it is important to consider why user participation is introduced into e-service development and what is to be achieved with e-services; these types of goals should guide the choice of user participation approaches.

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It is therefore a natural step to investigate the possibilities to apply different user participation approaches, which originate from the fields of systems development and human computer interaction, in e-service development. In this paper we analyze how user participation approaches meet the goals of public e-service development and use. In doing so, we identify challenges with applying existing user participation approaches for e-service development. Awareness of these challenges supports practitioners on how to mitigate these concerns in future e-service projects. Furthermore, it advances the body of research knowledge and defines areas for future research. The paper is structured as follows. In the next section we look at existing user participation research. We take off in the existing wisdom on user participation research as it is discussed in the systems development and human computer interaction fields. We then turn to the rather limited influences that user participation research has had on e-government research literature. In the third section we outline our research design. In the fourth section we identify eight goals with public e-service development. Section five contains a goal analysis of the three user participation approaches, which in section six is mapped to the e-service development goals. Finally, the paper ends with short a conclusion. 2. User participation research The need for user participation has long been recognized as an important area in systems development and human computer interaction (e.g. Baroudi, Olson, & Ives, 1986; Bødker, 1996; Floyd, Mehl, Reisin, Schmidt, & Wolf, 1989; Hirschheim, 1985; Mumford, 1981). For example, Muller et al. (1997) list 61 participatory methods, such as Joint Application Development (Wood & Silver, 1995) and ETHICS (Mumford, 1993). Aggregated on a higher level we find a number of well known user participation approaches, such as participatory design (Schuler & Namioka, 1993), user-centered design (Norman, 1986) and user innovation (Hippel, 1986). User participation is believed to provide many benefits especially when it comes to development situations where the tasks are not well understood, or there are special user populations. In the case of e-service development it could, for example, involve people with disabilities, since public authorities are under legal mandate to make sure that their information systems are usable by people with disabilities (Lundman, 2006). Existing research shows that user participation results in a more complete and accurate definition of requirements (Maiden & Rugg, 1996), improvement of work organization and industrial democracy (Cherry & Macredie, 1999), improved user interfaces (Smith & Dunckley, 2002), decreased user resistance to change (Bjerknes & Bratteteig, 1995), and greater user commitment to the implemented system (Markus, 1983). Despite reported benefits, user participation is not unproblematic and “qualitative evidence suggests that the state of IS participation practice is poor” (Markus & Mao, 2004). There are situations where the selected approach has been counterproductive (McKeen & Guimaraes, 1997) or characterized as demanding. For example, Wilson et al. (1996) and Heinbokel et al. (1996) report that user participation may have negative effects on project performance. Problems arise when systems developers have to resolve conflicts between user groups or when the users demand late changes. It has been noted that user participation per se is not a solution to user–developer communication problems and sometimes users have to be educated in what systems development means (Wilson, Bekker, Johnson, & Johnson, 1996). Oostveen and van den Besselaar (2004) note that user participation projects are often characterized as small, stand-alone applications with low organizational complexity. Furthermore, difficulties are found in sustaining continued use of participative approaches once the research interventions have ended (e.g. Hirschheim, 1983). As discussed in the Introduction there are a limited number of studies discussing user participation in e-government development,

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both in the area of systems development and human computer interaction, and even fewer with a focus on e-services. Consequently, it is, for example, not surprising when Benbasat (2010) concludes that egovernment is one future challenge in human computer interaction research. Jansen (2006) argues for studying the consequences of using the Scandinavian school, which is one type of user participation approach, in e-government development projects. However, Jansen does not provide any answers, rather gives a direction. Folkerd and Spinelli (2009) add to this discussion as well, when reporting on problems with user exclusion in the requirements engineering stage of public information system development. They state that the use of ‘non-collaborative’ systems development methods can result in “unpredictable usage of the system or partial rejection.” Tan et al. (2007) and Jones et al. (2007) are other examples of agenda setting research. They all acknowledge that we now target users outside the organization, instead of in-house users that were common when working with e-administration (Jansen, 2006). This elaboration of the user concept is not found in early research on development of e-government (Følstad, Jørgensen, & Krogstie, 2004; Oostveen & van den Besselaar, 2004), where users did not include citizens. Holmlid and Lantz (2006) draw the same conclusion and exemplify from an e-government project: “when users are brought up on the agenda they are regarded as internal users.” Følstad et al. (2004) have found consensus among project leaders on the importance of user participation in e-government development. They found that many projects had good user involvement, but lacked a more explicit process. Schedler and Summermatter (2007) conclude that larger municipalities are more likely than smaller ones to explore citizens' needs. However, they were unable to say whether this was caused by having the possibility to allocate more resources or by the need for scalable requirement techniques to handle the municipality size. There is, however, some research on user participation and eservice development processes. The most recent is perhaps the work of Axelsson et al. (2010) on challenges with user participation: (1) that e-services should target “all of us,” (2) citizens do need incentives to participate in the development process, and (3) that more active forms of participation are more demanding for the organization. However, they do not discuss how different approaches of user participation address these challenges or associate them to contemporary goals with e-service development. In addition, Gulliksen and Eriksson (2006) report on attitudes towards user participation in a public organization. They identified problems such as unseen users and lack of time. But they also formulated proposed solutions. One example is the “user pool” concept to facilitate the process of acquiring users to different development projects. Oostveen and van den Besselaar (2004) contribute on how to combine a variety of user participation techniques (interviews, survey, workshops, and scenario-based evaluation) in a large international e-government project. However, their study has limited value when it comes to sorting out effective user participation approaches. The investigated techniques can be part of several different approaches since they exist on a lower level of granularity than the user participation approaches. Several studies in human computer interaction (e.g. Olalere & Lazar, 2011; Shi, 2007) show that existing e-government solutions are inaccessible for disabled people, despite existing e-government policies. Similar findings are discussed by Lundman (2006) when she concludes that the awareness of disabilities needs to be strengthened in e-service development. She states that involving disabled users in the development process requires adapted user participation approaches. We can conclude that existing research provides little direction regarding which user participation approach is most effective in an e-service development setting. Existing research about user participation in e-services development seems to focus on setting the research agenda. Less research can be found on assessment of user participation approaches.

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3. Research design In this paper we take the method designer's perspective when addressing what challenges we expect if systems developers want to apply different user participation approaches to e-service development. We view each user participation approach as a specific design theory (Gregor & Jones, 2007). This means that each approach is the result from a goal-oriented design activity (Friedman, 2003), where certain goals were set out. Consequently, these goals tell us what can be achieved with that particular approach, which can be compared with the elicited e-service development goals.

3.1. Analysis framework adopted To achieve the end of comparing goals we have chosen the method rationale framework laid out in Ågerfalk and Wistrand (2003). This framework has successfully been used to analyze goals behind different systems development methods (e.g. Ågerfalk & Fitzgerald, 2005; Karlsson & Ågerfalk, 2009). The framework in Fig. 1 is depicted as a Unified Modelling Language-class diagram. In essence it consists of three classes: method fragment, goal, and value, and between these we find a number of named associations. The method fragment concept refers to a description of a systems development method, or any coherent part thereof (Harmsen, 1997). According to Brinkkemper et al. (1999), method fragments can be studied on five different levels of granularity: method, stage, model, diagram, and concept. Method addresses a complete method for systems development, for example, the Rational Unified Process. Concept, on the other hand, is the smallest part of a method, representing a single construct, for example an UML-class, in the method. In this framework all method fragments, such as prescribed concepts, notations, and procedures, are part of the method for at least one reason. This means that each method fragment is anchored in goals and values. Goals and values are often referred to as the method's perspective (Brinkkemper, 1996) or argumentative dimension (Jayratna, 1994). Goals reflect what the method user will be able to achieve when using the method, and constitute a verifiable state in the world. For example, what is the goal of using prototypes in participatory design? Reading Sommerville (2007) we find at least two goals: to support communication between developers and users as well as to enable them to experiment with the requirements. Hence, anchoring the prototype method fragment in these goals is an example of goal rationale. In addition, goals are anchored in values through the “value rationale” association. Values are ethical principles that make the goals worthy of achieving. For example, behind the two goals described above we find values that acknowledge the importance of communication between developers and users and that changing requirements are welcome.

Goal Achievement *

Value Achievement

*

*

Value Rationale

*

* *

Goal Contradiction

*

Value

Goal 1..* Goal Rationale

1..* *

*

Value Contradiction

* Method fragment Fig. 1. Method rationale framework (Ågerfalk & Wistrand, 2003).

A development approach often draws upon multiple theories. It is therefore natural to identify goals as well as values that support or contradict each other. This is apparent when the analysis is made on the more detailed level of method fragments, for example when comparing a set of concepts in a method. The method rationale framework acknowledges this fact allowing for both goals and values to support as well as contradict each other. 3.2. Data collection This study is based on two main data sources, a literature review on user participation approaches and official government documents about e-government. The literature review on user participation approaches has been carried out in two steps. First, we made a search on user participation approaches in order to sort existing research into user participation approaches. We conducted a search in journals belonging to the AIS senior scholars basket, as these are considered the top journals in the field of IS research. In addition, we added Communication of the ACM and Human–Computer Interaction to these journals. Our search included the following concepts: “participation,” “user participation,” “user involvement,” “end user development,” “end user computing,” “human–computer interaction,” together with the concept “systems development” since we explicitly wanted to incorporate existing systems development wisdom into e-service development research. Furthermore, we used “systems engineering” synonymously with systems development. Based on the result from the literature review we ended up with three user participation approaches: participatory design, user-centered design, and user innovation. The two former are approaches frequently cited in the literature using these names, while the latter is the general principle behind end user development and end user computing. Second, within each of these approaches we made a literature review identifying specific user participation methods, techniques, and guidelines. For each of the user participation approaches, we searched for core references. We identified the core literature using Web of Science and Google scholar where we used the references cited in the literature identified in the initial review as input. The references most referred by other research papers were considered as core papers and served as the basic foundation for describing the design approaches. The result from this part of the literature review was used as input for our analysis on the rationale behind the identified user participation approaches. The purpose was not to identify a complete set of references for each design approach. Instead we applied the empirical saturation principle (Strauss & Corbin, 1998) during data collection, where we added references until no additional goals were discovered. Example: When searching on user participation in Information Systems Journal we found Iivari and Iivari (2011) They claim that Norman coined user-centered design and their reference list includes Norman (1986). When searching in Google Scholars we found that this reference is frequently quoted. Our second data source is official government policy and strategic steering documents about e-government. Hence, we treat e-service development as a sub field of e-government, where the goals of egovernment apply to e-service development as well. These documents express the intentions with e-government investments; in other words, they express the needs that user participation approaches have to address during e-service development. We used the discussion of Axelsson et al. (2010) on e-government policies and strategic steering documents as a starting point in order to build on existing research. Being official documents, we used Google to collect them. As Axelsson et al. (2010) state, many of these documents share the same ambitions. Hence, for practical reasons, we chose strategic documents from larger government bodies in order to combine large coverage and to minimize the complexity of

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combining a large number of documents during the analysis. In this case we chose the action plan from the EU (Commission of the European Communities, 2006), and the e-government strategy from the U.S. (Office of Management and Budget, 2002). 3.3. Data analysis Our data analysis was done in three steps, where the last two steps form an iterative pattern. The first step, presented in Section 4, concerns elicitation of e-government goals from the EU action plan (Commission of the European Communities, 2006) and the U.S. egovernment strategy (Office of Management and Budget, 2002). The goal definition from the method rationale framework was used to identify statements about desirable states in the world. In total we identified nineteen goals in the two documents. Similar goals were then grouped together in order to reduce the number of goals to work with in the ongoing analysis. The final result is the eight goals illustrated in Fig. 2. In the second step, presented in Section 5, we reconstructed the goals of the user participation approaches. One limitation with the method rationale framework is the cumbersome notation. A perhaps more illustrative notation is the use of goal graphs by Yu (1993) and Mylopoulos et al. (2001). Goal graphs structure goals into networks, where associations between goals are shown as arrows. Supportive goals are shown using plus signs, while goal contradictions are represented using minus signs. We have selected goals put forward as important in the literature. We do not question the goals and why the method designer found them important to fulfill, as we are interested in how these goals can contribute to the e-government goals. Consequently, the underlying values are not included in the analysis. All methods consist of a large number of goals if we choose a low granularity level and each concept in the method is analyzed. However, we are not interested in the goals behind individual concepts. Instead we focus on the approaches' overall applicability for e-service development, since the action plans of the EU and the U.S. are expressed as strategic goals. Consequently, when using the method rationale framework we view each user participation approach as a possible stage in a systems development method, which is in line with the typology of method fragments (Brinkkemper, Saeki & Harmsen, 1999). The

-

E-G2: Todevelop e-services that are efficient for the government

results from this analysis are presented using goal graphs in Sections 5.1 to 5.3. The third step of our analysis, presented in Section 6, focuses on the possibilities to meet the e-government goals through each of the user participation approaches. We do that by mapping the design goals of each user participation approach to the e-government goals. With this basis we have identified challenges with meeting certain egovernment goals. 4. The goals of public e-services Both the EU and the U.S. have stated principles that should guide e-government development. In total we have indentified eight highlevel goals in our analysis, as illustrated in Fig. 1. The two action plans contain both similarities and differences. Starting with the similarities we identify the following. First, both documents express goals to reduce the number of barriers people face in their contacts with public authorities. In the EU-case it is expressed as “easy access for all,” while this is expressed as “make it easy for citizens to obtain service” and “make it easier for citizens to interact with the federal government” in the U.S. text. We choose to summarize this in the following goal statement: to develop e-services that are useable (E-G1). Second, both bodies want to improve efficiency through e-service development. It is explicitly expressed by the U.S. government as “improve government efficiency,” “simplifying agencies' business processes and reducing costs through integrating and eliminating redundant systems,” and “eliminating layers of government management.” In the EU document we find the same type of goal expressed as “contributing to a lighter administrative burden and efficiency gains.” We summarize this in the following two goal statements: to develop e-services that are efficient for the government (E-G2) and to employ an efficient development process (E-G3). The U.S. document states that e-services shall “improve government effectiveness” as a complement to improve efficiency. Effectiveness relates to getting the right things done, while efficiency means the effort needed to accomplish a task. This goal is similar to the EU-goal, “contributing to higher user satisfaction.” Hence, we define the following goal: to develop e-services that are relevant for the users (E-G4). In addition to these goals, an additional set of goals is found where the two bodies emphasize different aspects of e-government

E-G7: To develop e-services that support democracy

E-G3: To employ an efficient development process

AND E-G1: To develop e-services that are useable

+ E-G6: To develop trusted e-services

+

161

+ +

AND + E-G4: To develop e-services that are relevant for the users + E-G5: To develop e-services that improve responsiveness to citizen needs. Fig. 2. Goals with e-service development.

E-G8: To employ a democratic development process

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development. The U.S. document contains the following, “improve government's responsiveness to citizens” and “streamlining government operations to guarantee rapid response to citizen needs.” We phrase this as one goal: to develop e-services that improve responsiveness to citizen needs (E-G5). The EU, on the other hand, stresses that public administration shall deliver e-services that are “increasingly trusted by the public.” Therefore, our sixth goal is: to develop trusted e-services (E-G6). Finally, e-government in the EU shall contribute to the democratic process. This is stated in the goal “strengthening participation in democratic decision-making.” Moreover, the democratic process is also emphasized in the following goals: “contributing to higher transparency” and “contributing to higher accountability.” We therefore phrase the following goal: to develop e-services that support democracy (E-G7). Besides, democracy should also have an impact on the development process itself; it means that the government is to employ a democratic development process (E-G8).

5.1. Participatory design Participatory design dates back to the 1970s (Olphert & Damodaran, 2007) and it represents a rich set of theories and practices (Muller & Kuhn, 1993). Different direction exists within the participatory design approach, but they do share the overall goal, illustrated in Fig. 3, to “ensure a better fit between technology and the ways people (want to) perform their work” (Kensing & Blomberg, 1998) (PD-G1). In other words, participatory design is used in order to better understand the task to support and the differences that exist between user groups. Perhaps the most radical approach to participatory design is the Scandinavian School, where users and systems developers are seen as equal partners (Hendry, 2008). Much of the Scandinavian work had an explicit focus on workplace democracy and the politics of design (Lawrence & Low, 1993), as illustrated in projects such as Florence (Bjerknes & Bratteteig, 1988) and Utopia (Bødker, Ehn, Kammersgaard, Kyng & Sundblad, 1987). People affected by a change should be able to influence it (PD-G2). This is anchored in the belief that “good ideas are as likely (perhaps more likely) to come from the bottom up as from the top down” (Miller, 1993). The democratic principle has been emphasized differently outside Scandinavia. In the US, for example, debates about industrial democracy were not as prevalent and researchers pursued participatory design agendas for other reasons. For example, researchers recognized the flawed results of existing systems development methods (see e.g. Clement, 1994). Moreover, during the 1980s “industrial democracy changed throughout Scandinavia and Europe, including a decrease in the bargaining power of unions” (Kensing & Blomberg, 1998) and a second generation of participatory design emerged. Users are still viewed as equal partners in the project, but not for political reasons as earlier. In practice this still means an intense commitment for both users and systems developers to cooperate (Schuler & Namioka, 1993) (PD-G3), where they acknowledge each other's competencies and inadequacies in order to achieve a mutual dialog (Carmel, Whitaker, & George, 1993; Olphert & Damodaran, 2007). Hence, the systems developers need “knowledge of the actual use

5. User participation approaches In this section we analyze the Participatory Design (PD), UserCentered Design (UCD), and User Innovation (UI). The analysis maps out, and relates, the goals of each user participation approach, which enables comparison of the three. Each goal is first given a user participation approach identifier (PD, UCD and UI respectively), and then a goal identifier (G1, etc.). We illustrate each user participation approach through a shared eservice development example at the end of each section. This complements the fairly abstract goal analysis with illustrations on the main differences between each approach. In order to have a unified starting point to describe each approach we use the case from Axlesson et al. (2009) on “an e-service for handling student anonymity when marking written exams.” They describe the project origin as the “student demands for a higher legal security in the marking process of written exams. Students argued that the teachers cannot be totally fair in their marks as long as they know who the student is.”

PD-G1: Ensure a better fit between technoloy and the ways people (want to) perform their work +

+

AND

PD-G2: People affected by a decision or change should be able to influence it

PD-G3: Commitment for both users and systems developers to cooperate +

+ PD-G11: users must participate in decision making +

OR

+

PD-G5: Users need knowledge of possible technological options

+

AND PD-G8: Concensus among all users

PD-G6: Users as advisors

+

+ PD-G7: Users as representatives

+

AND

PD-G4: Systems developers need knowledge of the actual use context + PD-G9: users must have accesss to relevant information

PD-G10: users must have the possibility to take an independent position

Fig. 3. Goal analysis for participatory design.

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context” (Kensing & Blomberg, 1998) (PD-G4), whereas users need “knowledge of possible technological options” (Kensing & Blomberg, 1998) (PD-G5). Mumford (1983) discusses three levels of participation. The least demanding form is the consultative level, where users are advisors in specific design decisions (PD-G6). The mid-range level, representative, means selecting users who make design decisions (PD-G7). Finally, participation using consensus means seeking an agreement between all users concerning the design decisions (PD-G8). The two latter levels require the users to be more active in the development process. Furthermore, Kensing and Blomberg (1998) state that users must: have access to relevant information (PD-G9); have the possibility to take an independent position to the problem dealt with (PDG10); and participate in decision making (PD-G11). Example: The decision to develop an e-service to solve student anonymity when marking written exams affects the work situation for teachers and students. They are, therefore, considered important user groups and they should participate in defining the project goals and in the development process. It is very important for systems developers to have a thorough understanding about the teachers' and students' actual work situation in order to be able to improve their situation. They need, for example, to understand how teachers mark written exams and how students want to receive information about their grades. The development work can be organized in three different ways, based on participatory design. The first option is participation as advisors, where the system developers elicit requirements using e-service prototypes. The users, for example the students, assess these prototypes. The systems developers balance the assessments made by different user groups and make design changes. The second option, users as representatives, means a smaller group of students and teachers would represent their particular user group. These smaller groups participate actively and elaborate on e-service prototypes together with the systems developers. The design decisions are, in this case, joint decisions by the representatives and the systems developers. The third option is that all users participate in the development work. In this case it would include all the students and all the teachers at the university. All of them would participate in crafting the prototype and design changes would only be implemented when consensus agreements are reached. 5.2. User-centered design User-centered design emerged in the early 1980s, in the area of human computer interaction, and its origin is often associated with Norman (1982). User-centered design implies taking “every individual user's capabilities into consideration and fully satisfy his or her needs related to the system to be developed” (Iivari & Iivari, 2011) which means that information systems are to serve the user (UCDG1) (Norman, 1986). More specifically, “the needs of the user should dominate the design of the interface” (Norman, 1986) (UCD-G2) and the remaining parts of the information system should depend on these needs (UCD-G3). As shown in Fig. 4 users and systems developers are not viewed as equal partners. Especially early user-centered design literature emphasizes systems developers as designers (UCD-G4): “spend ample time with users in their milieu to appreciate their needs” (Kling, 1977) (UCD-G5) and “designers must understand who the users will be” (Gould & Lewis, 1985). This implies a need for knowledge transfer, where systems developers shall have extensive business knowledge (UCD-G6). Hence, in the early days of user-centered design users were seen as advisors (UCD-G7). But more recent research is influenced by participatory design. For example, Marti and Bannon (2009) state that users shall be “active agents.” In both cases users participate in the decision process (UCD-G8), but in the latter case users are more

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directly involved as representatives (UCD-G9) (Gulliksen et al., 2003), although the designer responsibility still remains with the systems developers. Example: The project goal, to provide teachers and students with a useful e-service for guaranteeing student anonymity when written exams are marked, is defined by the systems developers. The systems developers are in charge of the development process, which is driven by the user interface needs; based on these needs the systems developers identify e-service functionality. The systems developers, therefore, need knowledge about the users' operating environment, for example how the teachers mark written exams. As an initial step the systems developers can choose to use, for example, ethnographic, observation, or scenario techniques to gather requirements for the initial design. If they chose to use a scenario-based technique users can be organized in focus groups where they act as representatives. In this case we can identify at least two user groups: teachers and students. As a result of the initial requirements work, the systems developers create a number of personas. A persona contains all the characteristics of the primary user, where a scenario describes an event involving the user and the e-service. The e-service development is an iterative design process, where the teachers and students assess the e-service and its functionality prototypes. If the systems developers choose to use focus groups these can be used to gather information about users' attitudes towards the developed e-service. The systems developers decide which changes will be implemented. 5.3. User innovation User innovation focuses on innovations made by users, the overall goal being to provide innovative systems functionality (UI-G1). Consequently, the source for innovation and design is not the systems developers. Instead lead users, “users whose present strong needs will become general in a marketplace months or years in the future,” (von Hippel, 1986) identify the problems (UI-G2) and the design solution (UI-G3) (Kujala & Kauppinen, 2004). User innovation exists in several variants such as end user development, where end users construct their own information systems (Taylor, Moynihan, & Wood-Harper, 1998). These innovations have in some cases been disseminated as company-wide systems (Rittenberg & Senn, 1993) or new products. Another approach is user-lead systems development (Dodd & Carr, 1994; Lawrence & Low, 1993), where lead users head the development team. In both cases lead users' ideas are captured (UI-G4) and transformed into full-blown solutions in collaboration between users and systems developers (UI-G5). The design process is an intertwined part of the lead users' daily work, where they incrementally create products and services that satisfy their needs (von Hippel, 2005). Subsequently, as shown in Fig. 5, lead users are responsible for problems and solutions (UI-G6). The needs of lead users do not always equals the needs of the future users in general. Therefore, systems developers need to assess “how lead user data apply to the more typical user” (von Hippel, 1986) (UI-G7). This means that although lead users own the problem and the initial design, systems developers build the final solution (UIG8), which might differ in some aspect from the initial design in order to make it work for the general public. Example: A lead user leads the e-service development project. As a consequence the project goal, to guarantee student anonymity when written exams are marked, is based on their preferences and how the lead user perceives the problem. In this case, let us assume that one teacher is the lead user and has identified the need for an e-service that guarantees student anonymity when written exams are marked. This teacher discusses this need with the IT-department and then starts to develop an e-service that satisfies his or her needs on how the student anonymity can be guaranteed. The development work is

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UCD-G1: Information systems are to serve the user +

+

AND

UCD-G3: The information system should depend on interface needs

UCD-G4: System developers are designers AND

+

UCD-G6: System developers shall have extensive business knowledge

UCD-G2: The needs of the user should dominate the design of the interface +

+

+

UCD-G8: users participate in the decision process + UCD-G7: Users as advisors

+

UCD-G5: Spend ample time with users in their milieu to appreciate their needs

+

OR

UCD-G9: Users as representatives Fig. 4. Goal analysis for user-centered design.

UI-G1: Provide innovative systems functionality +

AND

+

UI-G4: Capture lead users ideas

UI-G8: Systems developers build the final solution

+

+

UI-G5: Collaboration between users and developers

UI-G3: Lead users identify the design solutions

+

+ UI-G2: Lead users identify the problems

AND

+

UI-G6: Lead users are responsible for problems and solutions

Fig. 5. Goal analysis for user innovation.

+ UI-G7: To assess how lead user data apply to the more typical user

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done on the teacher's own computer, based on his or her knowledge of marking exams, IT, and e-service development. The development process is iterative, where the teacher develops and tests the eservice in his or her daily work. Hence, the e-service is tested on a limited number of students. The systems developers act as senior support concerning development issues during this phase of the project. As a second phase of the project, the systems developers assess the developed e-service when the teacher has finalized it. This assessment is done to evaluate how the e-service applies to the needs of teachers and students in general. Consequently, the systems developers may test the developed e-service on these user groups and modify the solution before deployment. 6. Design goal challenges for user participation In this section we have mapped the goals of e-service development to the goals of the three user participation approaches using references to the goal graphs in Fig. 2 to Fig. 5. The presentation is structured based on the three challenges we have found: dispersed user target segments, nature of participation, and lack of adequate skills. 6.1. Dispersed user target segments Two e-service goals closely associated with each other are “to develop e-services that are usable” (E-G1) and “to develop e-services that are relevant for the users.” (E-G4) An important aspect of both these goals is to identify a clear user target segment to measure goal fulfillment. All three user participation approaches advocate working with clearly defined target groups. User innovation works with the concept of lead users (UI-G4), while participatory design applies three levels of participation, ranging from advising to consensus (PD-G6 to PD-G8). Finally, user-centered design treats users as advisors or representatives (UCD-G7, UCD-G9). In both these latter cases the users represent a target group. Or when considering the first generation participatory design, all users are included to reach consensus. Demarcating a target group to define specific design goals is somewhat at odds with the general purpose of e-services. Many e-services have to be offered more or less universally to all citizens (Henriksen, 2004). Targeting all users or user groups in an entire population is a daunting task, which seems very hard to accomplish. In other words, systems developers need to be aware of the dispersed target segment faced during the development of e-services. In turn this challenge affects the possibility to create criteria for determining the relevance and usability of an e-service. 6.2. Nature of participation The list of e-service goals contains two democracy goals: “to develop e-services that support democracy” (E-G7) and “to employ a democratic development process” (E-G8). These goals are linked to each other, since the e-service is the end of the development process. A democratic development process concerns how the government communicates with the users and encourages them to put their opinions forward, as well as how to ensure participation across citizen groups. All three user participation approaches encourage communication with user, but in various ways. User innovation contributes least to a democratic development process, through its use of lead users (UI-G2 to UI-G4). Lead users may not be representative for the public in general (cf. UI-G7). Moreover, there is no guarantee that their solutions put democratic principles, such as people with disabilities use of e-services, (Lundman, 2006), before personal needs, since their solutions are primarily based on their own preferences. User-centered design recommends

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working with users as advisors or as representatives, while participatory design ranges from advisors to consensus decisions among all users. Working with consensus decisions among all users fulfills the democratic goal best. However, the goal is impossible to achieve in practice considering what “all” users means when developing eservices. The other extreme, “users as advisors” (PD-G6, UCD-G7) means that users have limited possibilities to affect the design. The third alternative, “users as representatives” (PD-G7, UCD-G9), means that users are more involved in the design process, which better satisfies the goal of democratic development process. In addition, participatory design stresses that users must have the possibility to take an independent position to the problem (PD-G10), aligning with the democratic principle to encourage people to put their opinion forward. Consequently, these approaches have a broader selection of users compared to user innovation, but compromises how much the users are involved in the design process. All three approaches are anchored in the assumption that individual users in a target group can be identified (cf. PD-G7, UCD-G7, UIG4). However, as Jansen (2006) and Axelsson and Melin (2008) show, e-services mean primarily addressing external users. Hence, it becomes more complicated to address appropriate users compared to in-house development, although methods for user identification do exist (e.g. Kujala & Kauppinen, 2004). In addition, a more active user role is also more demanding. For example, in the case of user innovation the lead user has ownership of the design (UI-G6). This is a major challenge considering that participation of external users is based on free will. Internal users can be obliged to participate and may also see benefits with developed functionality more clearly (Albinsson & Forsgren, 2005). Accordingly, systems developers need to be aware of the incentives for participation since it could create a false user representation, a risk discussed, for example, by Stahl (2007). In summary, systems developers need to be aware of the how their choice of user participation approach fit democracy goals associated with e-service development, since the investigated approaches prescribe different nature of participation. 6.3. Lack of adequate skill Two of the identified e-service goals are “to develop e-services that are efficient for the government” (E-G2) and “to develop eservices that improve responsiveness to citizen needs” (E-G5). Achieving these goals is highly dependent on knowledge about how to streamline internal processes and use the public authorities' back-end information systems (Vassilakis, Lepouras, Rouvas, & Georgiadis, 2004). This creates complex development situations, which are often invisible to the external users. When considering the goals of our three approaches we see that they demand business knowledge to different degrees. Yet again most demanding is user innovation, since the lead user is responsible for identifying the design solution (UI-G3, IU-G6). It can be argued that the systems developers build the final information system (UI-G8), but the challenge still remains since it is based on the lead user's solution. In the other two participation approaches this becomes less of a problem when the systems developers design the solutions (PD-G3, UCD-G1), either together with the users or based on their input. The systems developers ease the burden of the users since the developers are to have extensive business knowledge (UCD-G6). Hence, least demanding is user-centered design and participatory design in those cases where users have a more passive role as advisors. Much of the same problem arises when examining the sixth goal of e-service development: “to develop trusted e-services” (E-G6). Users typically do not have extensive knowledge on how to build trust based on information security solutions. Subsequently, the systems developers' technical competence is often needed. The goals of

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participatory design and user-centered design are therefore better suited for this goal, since the design is either done by the systems developer or in cooperation with the systems developers. Finally, e-service projects have to employ an efficient development process (E-G3). An efficient development process requires a suitable set of method fragments selected for the situation, which in turn requires project team members to critically review potential method fragments. None, of the investigated approaches address this aspect per se, but user innovation is the approach that induces most uncertainties, since the lead users are responsible for the development process. Users are often not skilled in development processes and the resources needed are therefore difficult to estimate. In the other two approaches, systems developers are involved early in the development process and have the possibility to affect the process and make it more efficient. In summary, systems developers need to be aware of what type of skills they demand from the users when they choose the user participation approach. 7. Conclusions In this paper, we have reported on the possibility of three user participation approaches to support e-service development. The intention has been to raise the awareness of these approaches' strengths and limitations, identify challenges, and see how the different approaches can meet the goals of e-service use and development, which are found in e-government policies. This study has been justified by (a) recent e-government research (e.g. Axelsson & Melin, 2008; Folkerd & Spinelli, 2009; Jansen, 2006) stressing the importance of user participation, while (b) falling short of discussing the usefulness of specific approaches. An approach's usefulness has to take its point of departure in what is to be achieved. In this study we took off in the goals expressed in the action plans of the EU (Commission of the European Communities, 2006) and the U.S. (Office of Management and Budget, 2002). Through goal analysis we have shown how participatory design, user-centered design, and user innovation fit the e-service development context. The practical implications of this analysis are three identified challenges for systems developers when choosing user participation approach for e-service development: (1) unclear user target segments can impede the fulfillment of usability and relevance goals; (2) the nature of participation can impede the fulfillment of democracy goals, and (3) lack of adequate skills can impede the fulfillment of efficiency goals. None of the user participation approaches is a silver bullet. “Early” participatory design fulfills the democratic goals advocating consensus decisions, but falls short when it comes to handle the actual participation with the immense number of users that it would mean. User innovation demarcates the user target segment through the use of lead users, and hence makes it easier to define usability and relevance. But, the democratic goals suffer since the lead users' preferences may not be representative for the public in general. Furthermore, user innovation induces uncertainties when it comes to reaching efficiency goals due to the risk of users lacking adequate skills. The compromise is perhaps a more passive form of user participation as advisors or representatives found in user-centered design and more recent participatory design literature. Our results extend the existing e-government body of knowledge, and show challenges that future research needs to focus. This does not mean that e-government researchers have not undertaken pertinent research. In fact the converse may be true. For instance, our analysis confirms the challenges Axelsson et al. (2010) found: (1) that eservices target “all of us,” (2) citizens do need incentives to

participate in the development process, and (3) that more active forms of participation are more demanding for the organization. However, we add another dimension to these challenges by associating them with the goals found in the action plans for e-government. We show in what way these challenges affect goal fulfillment of eservice development and we add a new challenge to this list: the need for adequate skills. Our study complements Axelsson et al. (2010), who discuss user participation “without concentrating the discussion of a certain school.” The presented results provide more guidance for selecting specific participatory design approaches, or perhaps combining them. At the same time these results have a higher level of granularity than the findings presented by Oostveen and van den Besselaar (2004). They discuss user participation techniques such as interviews, surveys and workshops, techniques that can be part of several different user participation approaches. Our findings also contribute to research on understanding egovernment policy implementations as success or failure from a user-centric perspective (Altameem, et al., 2006). It shows that user participation and citizen empowerment are not unambiguous concepts (Cavaye, 1995; Heeks, 1999) when implemented, and each user participation approach has its challenges. These challenges are important factors to be aware of in the negotiation process of policy implementation that Hardy and Williams (2008) describe. It is important to acknowledge that the type of user participation approach the systems developers chose to use, decides what user participation and citizens empowerment mean in the case of e-service, or e-government, development. To date, existing policies provide little guidance in this area, which is echoed by Lind et al. (2009). In addition to the results on user participation we can conclude that the goals elicited from the action plans contain contradictions. The action plans contain democratic and efficiency goals, which creates a tension related both to the development process itself and to the developed e-services. The most efficient development process is perhaps the process that does not involve any user. However, that will also be the least democratic development process. This study has been carried out on three user participation approaches. Of course, there is no clear-cut distinction between these approaches in practice. This is evident when reading contemporary human computer interaction literature on, for example, participator design and user-centered design (Marti & Bannon, 2009). This overlap is apparent in our goal analysis where we acknowledge that, for example, participatory design exists in different variants— incorporating slightly different goals. However, the stricter categorization fills the purpose of structuring the discussion. In addition, what may have impact on our results is the choice of e-service goals to fulfill. We have used the action plans of the EU and the U.S. as a baseline for our analysis. But we recognize that other action plans can be promoted (e.g. Danish government, 2007; Government Offices of Sweden, 2008; Ministry of Modernisation, 2009), which may result in other goals. Further research could thus broaden the scope to investigate goals from other action plans. References Albinsson, L., & Forsgren, K. (2005). Co-design metaphors and scenarios — Two elements in a design language for co-design. Paper presented at the LAP, Kiruna. Altameem, T., Zairi, M., & Alshawi, S. (2006). Critical success factors of e-government: A proposed model for e-government implementation. Paper presented at the Innovations in Information Technology, 2006. Anthopoulos, L. G., Siozos, P., & Tsoukalas, I. A. (2007). Applying participatory design and collaboration in digital public services for discovering and re-designing egovernment services. Government Information Quarterly, 24, 353–376. Asgarkhani, M. (2005). The effectiveness of e-service in local government: A case study. Electric Journal of e-government, 3(4), 157–166. Axelsson, K., & Melin, U. (2008). Citizen participation and involvement in egovernment projects — An emergent framework. Paper presented at the EGOV 2008. Axelsson, K., Melin, U., & Lindgren, I. (2009, June 8-10). Developing public e-services for several stakeholders — A multifaceted view of the needs for an e-service.

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Fredrik Karlsson is Associate Professor of Informatics at Örebro University and has also currently a research position at University of Skövde. He received his PhD in Information Systems Development from Linköping University. His research on tailoring of systems development methods, system development methods as reusable assets, CAME-tools, and information security has appeared in a variety of IS journals and conferences. He is currently heading the research group MELAB at Örebro University and is Deputy Head of Swedish Business School at Örebro University.

Eva Söderström is Associate Professor at the University of Skövde. She earned her PhD in Computer and System Science from Stockholm University/Royal Institute of Technology in 2004, on the subject of B2B standards implementation. Her current research is focused on trust and standards for inter-organizational collaboration, through for example e-services. She has led and participated in several national and international projects, and has published over 60 internationally reviewed publications.

Jesper Holgersson is a PhD student and a teacher at the University of Skövde. He received a master's degree from University of Skövde 2002. His research mainly concerns user participation in e-service development, particularly e-services used in public settings.

Karin Hedström is Assistant Professor of Informatics at Örebro University. She holds a PhD in Information Systems from Linköping University. Her research interests concern the ethics of information- and communication technologies (ICT), with a focus on how different interests and values influence the design of ICTs. She is interested in the social and ethical effects of developing and using ICTs. She is especially interested in the development and use of IT in health care and Electronic Government. She has published several journal- and conference articles on the issue of values of IT in health care. She is a member of the research group MELAB.