Read and navigate.gov.br – Ranielli Azevedo

I will share a research one of my students made in Brazil. I decided to pick this research because I wanted to rethink our work there based on the theories we are discussing here, and I also thought it would be interesting for you to have the chance know some of the research we do at POSLIN/UFMG.

       

      Azevedo, Ranielli Santos de (2013). Ler e navegar.gov.br: experiências de interação em um portal de transparência. Belo Horizonte, POSLIN, FALE/UFMG. (Dissertação de mestrado) (http://www.bibliotecadigital.ufmg.br/dspace/handle/1843/MGSS-9B3PEA)

Azevedo, Ranielli Santos de (2013). Read and navigate.gov.br: interactive experiences in a transparency portal. Belo Horizonte, POSLIN, FALE/UFMG. (MA dissertation)

·        Context:

The Brazilian government has a website called Portal da Transparência – Transparency Portal – that the citizens can use to know how the government is using public money. As it is a site for the public, and not for experts in economy, Azevedo raised the question of how people use the Portal and how easily they understand the information available.

·        Questions: 

·       How does the presentation of the content of the Transparency Portal of the Brazilian Federal Government influence the citizens’ reading and navigation experiences in this website?

o   Are there differences between reading and navigating?

o   How do the codes and visual elements displayed at the composition of the Transparency Portal influence reading and navigating?

o   How does literacy, including digital, interfere in the interaction of the readers/users of the Transparency Portal?

o   Does the vocabulary used at the Transparency Portal contribute for the success of the comprehension of the information by the citizen?

o   Is the usability of the Transparency Portal good?

·        Methods

Subjects:

o   A heterogeneous group of 10 people. Ages varying from 20 to 60 years old (eight from 20 to 34; one 52 and one 60)

o   Level of education: complete high school (3), incomplete major (3), and graduate (4)

o   Different professions

o   All of them use computers every day or almost every day.

Methodology:

Questionnaire – fill a form with personal information and computer use

Think aloud protocol – look for information at the Transparency Portal to answer to 14 questions (23 items). The protocols were registered in audio and video using Camtasia.

Interview – talk to the researcher about the experience of using the Transparency Portal

Navigating Skills:

Recognize the tools to make search and advanced search

Select adequate key-words

Evaluate if the information is relevant for the task

Recognize (graphic and linguistic) elements that indicate the presence of a link

Self-localization (know where you are in the different layers of a hypertext)

Infer the content of a link from its label (forward inferences)

Select relevant information for the reading purpose

Establish a connection between the link and the content 

This list of skills was built based mainly on:

DIAS, Marcelo Cafiero; NOVAIS, Ana Elisa. (2009). Por uma matriz de letramento digital. In: III Encontro Nacional sobre hipertexto. 2009. Belo Horizonte. Anais do III Encontro Nacional sobre hipertexto. Belo Horizonte: CEFET-MG, out. p. 1-19. Available at http://www.ufpe.br/nehte/hipertexto2009/anais/p-w/por-uma-matriz.pdf.

Levels of navigation

1.     Search highlighted information in the text

2.     Search information with one step and easy to find link

3.     Search information with 2 to 4 steps and easy to find link

4.     Search information with 2 to 4 steps including filling simple forms

5.     Search information with 2 to 4 steps including filling a search field to filter data

6.     Search information with 5 steps including filling a search field to filter data (long list of results)

7.     Search information with 2 steps connecting different parts of the same page

8.     Search information with 5 steps connecting different parts of the same page

9.     Search information with 2 steps, a difficult to find link, requiring ability to use the mouse.

Reading Skills:

Find explicit information on the text

Infer the meaning of a word or expression

Infer information

Make an interpretation of the text using/ with the help of graphic material

Establish connections between parts of a text

Evaluate the content of a text (judge the reliability and if you agree)

Make an interpretation of information presented in non-continuous texts (tables and graphics, for instance)

Infer the relationship between names and concepts of the text (connect the name and the concept)

·        Findings

• Results of the questionnaire as well as facial expressions, comments, signs of irritation show that reading and navigating in the Portal are demanding activities
• Results       

Itens	Percentage of correct answers
Navegation Items	70%
Reading Items	52%

• Based on these numbers, Azevedo could have said that the problem are the readers/users, who are not good readers or navigators. In fact, the lack of literacy, including digital literacy, intensified the level of difficulty of the interactions with the Portal. […] However, even among the subjects that demonstrated having more developed reading and navigating skills, she could clearly notice their difficulties to deal with the Portal many times.
• Previous knowledge interfere in the reading and navigation tasks.
• The most literate subjects used reading strategies that helped them to understand what, initially, seemed to be incomprehensible. But even so, they made many mistakes and in some cases, or gave up finding the answer to the question.
• The codes and visual elements displayed at the composition of the Transparency Portal influence reading and navigating and many times for worse (only 51% of the correct answers were found without difficulty).
• Besides problems caused by the difficulty to navigate at the Portal; reading and navigating skills and the lack of previous knowledge of the topics were responsible for the unsatisfactory results (navigating was better/easier than reading)
• Navigating difficulties:
• Infer the content of a link its label (forward inferences)
• Understand new visual codes as info-graphics and word cloud
• Reading difficulties:
• lack of previous knowledge on the topic
• to deal with technical vocabulary
• to understand non continuous texts (as graphics and word cloud)
• Some of the problems of the Transparency Portal:
• Some links are difficult to find
• To many steps to get to the information
• Some framing and colors problems
• Some tools require a very precise use of mouse or touch pad
• Higher levels of education led to better comprehension of the Portal, but did not lead to better navigation
•  It is difficult to separate reading from navigating. This frontier is even harder to establish when info-graphics are concerned. “In fact, we argue that navigation is more related to the act of finding information, to the strategies the reader/user develops to explore and keep track of his localization in the virtual space and in relation to the topic (which is a superficial layer of reading). However, what we call reading, in contrast to navigation, would be connecting the different layers of the information to build comprehension. It is when the reader over pass the contact zone and manage to understand the content, and is able to build connections from the information he had access to.” (Azevedo, 2013, p.101)