User experiences on communication toolboxes in Governmental Agencies and Multi-government Organizations

Resumen

Customs practitioners have the need to communicate efficiently with their colleagues in an international context frequently. Numerous platforms have been developed but the overall user experience has not been studied until now. This thesis work delivers the results of the empirical study addressing the user experience of communication toolboxes, collaborative ICT tools, software, and applications that customs practitioners use in their operations and daily work. The work has been based on the request by the PEN-CP project (Pan-European Network of Customs Practitioners). This is the first time that the overall user experience of different communication platforms has been studied in this context and the results of this work will help in the development of new communication software. Due to the ongoing COVID19 pandemic, it was not possible to conduct the studies onsite and online interviews with the GoToMeeting program were conducted with the objective of discovering UX problems and in a later stage, through qualitative analysis, with the Atlas.Ti program, proposing solutions. Finally, considering the analyzed data a prototype was implemented with Figma. The results contain three categories of problems related to the users’ experience when using their dedicated software: important features that work well and should therefore be included in the next version of communication tools, features that cause problems of different sorts and should be improved and other problems that need further analysis to propose a solution. This work has uncovered generic UX problems, that are common to these organizations but in future work it is advisable to isolate each organization to understand at a deeper level their work process by conducting contextual inquiry and task analysis, for example.