Measuring Engagement with Online Forms

Online form-filling and transactions are extremely common, both for industry and government; and it is important to provide a satisfying user experience during these tasks if customers or citizens are to continue using online channels. However, reliable measures of experience in these cases are limited. Other areas of information interaction, e.g., online search, news, and shopping, are increasingly exploring and attempting to measure the concept of user engagement (UE). In this study, we ask whether UE is an appropriate outcome for the utilitarian activities of online form-filling and transactions. We describe work in progress which measures UE using the User Engagement Scale (UES) with utilitarian tasks, and which looks for behaviours which correlate with the UES. Early results suggest that, first, the UES can be adapted to such situations; and second, that readily observable user behaviours including time on site, mouse movements, and keypresses correlate with UES sub-scales and can, to some extent, predict users' responses.