Webpage usability and utility content: Citizens' rights and the law on Gov.uk

The goal of this descriptive study is to investigate the visual and written representation of legal knowledge in selected articles and directories of the Gov.uk platform, which transmits and mediates legal knowledge from the UK Government and Ministry of Justice as institutional principals to individual citizens. The data suggests that the Your rights and the law pages at Gov.uk are able to deliver good value to the end-user (i.e. knowledge) and to the institution (in terms of credibility and trust generation). Written mediation of legal knowledge through the Your rights and the law pages at Gov.uk, we have seen, comes with recourse to interdiscursive and interlocutive dialogic devices. Oftentimes, expository reformulations resemble lexicographic definitions in dictionary articles: they may come in diverse combinations and vary according to the direction of the definition, type (analytical or by function), present or absent relational expressions, etc. This involves reconceptualization of terms from source discourses and approximations to specialized meanings. From a usability point of view, the Your rights and the law pages appear to qualify as mature information formats and a powerful means for knowledge construction and representation, as well as engagement and interaction with end-users (GDS-a, GDS-b). They satisfy the standard criteria for usable user interfaces – layout consistency, meaningful headings, itemized keywords and hierarchical organization of expandable content, clear signposting and multiple access routes, etc. Accordingly, information is diluted across pages, and content often graphically schematized into bulleted lists that separate and fix subordinate components on the page. This demonstrates a major concern with the graphic/visual organization of expandable utility content, which is a major prerequisite for encouraging users to turn to the Gov.uk platform rather than other sources for basic self-help, services and documentation.