Hi folks,
I am happy to announce that we have just released a first round of improvements to Media Viewer, based on community feedback.
The goal for these improvements is to make Media Viewer easier to use by readers and casual editors, our primary target users for this tool.
To that end, we created a new 'minimal design’, with these features: * "More Details” button: a more prominent link to the File: page * separate icons for “Download" and "Share or Embed" features * an easier way to enlarge images by clicking on them * a simpler metadata panel with fewer items * faster image load with thumbnail pre-rendering
These features are now live on Wikimedia Commons and sister projects (1), and will be deployed on all Wikipedias this Thursday by 20:00 UTC.
Next, we plan to work on these other improvements: * an easier way to disable Media Viewer for personal use * a caption or description right below the image
Learn more about these features on the Media Viewer Improvements page (2). They are based on findings from our recent community consultation (3) and ongoing user research (4). For more information, visit the Help FAQ page (5).
Please let us know what you think of these new features on the Media Viewer talk page (6).
We would like to thank all the community members who suggested these improvements. Our research suggests that they offer a better user experience, that is both clearer and simpler -- and that clarifies the relationship between Media Viewer and the File: description page.
We will send another update in October, once the next round of improvements has been released.
Onward!
Fabrice and the Multimedia Team
(1) Pictures of the Day on Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Picture_of_the_day#mediaviewer/Fi...
(2) Improvements page: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multimedia/Media_Viewer/Improvements
(3) Community suggestions: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Engagement_(Product)/Media_Viewer_...
(4) User Research: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Media_Viewer_Research_Round_2_(August_2014)
(5) Help page: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Multimedia/Media_Viewer
(6) Talk page: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Multimedia/About_Media_Viewer#Media_View...
_______________________________
Fabrice Florin Product Manager, Multimedia Wikimedia Foundation
ok I'm a little late to the party but why doesnt media viewer just use the same very effective layout of the category slide show thats currently operating on Commons given it has already solved all these issues
On 1 October 2014 07:21, Fabrice Florin fflorin@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi folks,
I am happy to announce that we have just released a first round of improvements to Media Viewer, based on community feedback.
The goal for these improvements is to make Media Viewer easier to use by readers and casual editors, our primary target users for this tool.
To that end, we created a new 'minimal design’, with these features:
- "More Details” button: a more prominent link to the File: page
- separate icons for “Download" and "Share or Embed" features
- an easier way to enlarge images by clicking on them
- a simpler metadata panel with fewer items
- faster image load with thumbnail pre-rendering
These features are now live on Wikimedia Commons and sister projects (1), and will be deployed on all Wikipedias this Thursday by 20:00 UTC.
Next, we plan to work on these other improvements:
- an easier way to disable Media Viewer for personal use
- a caption or description right below the image
Learn more about these features on the Media Viewer Improvements page (2). They are based on findings from our recent community consultation (3) and ongoing user research (4). For more information, visit the Help FAQ page (5).
Please let us know what you think of these new features on the Media Viewer talk page (6).
We would like to thank all the community members who suggested these improvements. Our research suggests that they offer a better user experience, that is both clearer and simpler -- and that clarifies the relationship between Media Viewer and the File: description page.
We will send another update in October, once the next round of improvements has been released.
Onward!
Fabrice and the Multimedia Team
(1) Pictures of the Day on Commons:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Picture_of_the_day#mediaviewer/Fi...
(2) Improvements page: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multimedia/Media_Viewer/Improvements
(3) Community suggestions:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Engagement_(Product)/Media_Viewer_...
(4) User Research: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Media_Viewer_Research_Round_2_(August_2014)
(5) Help page: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Multimedia/Media_Viewer
(6) Talk page:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Multimedia/About_Media_Viewer#Media_View...
Fabrice Florin Product Manager, Multimedia Wikimedia Foundation
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Fabrice_Florin_(WMF)
Commons-l mailing list Commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
On Wed, Oct 1, 2014 at 1:37 AM, Gnangarra gnangarra@gmail.com wrote:
ok I'm a little late to the party but why doesnt media viewer just use the same very effective layout of the category slide show thats currently operating on Commons given it has already solved all these issues
I am even more late but just wanted to point out that the problems in MediaViewer were identified by click tracking and user tests; before performing those, the interface did not seem problematic. Given that no such analysis has been done on the category viewer gadget, I would be skeptical towards claims that it performs any better.
(More generally, I think there is a tendency in the community to be overconfident in the effectiveness of the current interface, and a tendency in WMF to dismiss it off-hand. More curiosity as to what works well and what not would be a welcome change on both sides.)
Media Viewer and Commons slideshow have similarities (both display images, information about images and allow to navigate through a sequence of images). However, they have different purposes and those get reflected in their layout choices:
Commons slideshow shows the collection of images and detailed information for the current file. It also provides controls to move through the collection and play/pause the slideshow. That is useful to view all kinds of details of a group of images, but the area to actually view the image becomes reduced as a consequence. As Gergo mentioned, we have no data from actual use on how much that impact users.
Media Viewer tries to maximise the space devoted to show the image and places it as the first most prominent element. It provides support even go completely full-screen and use the 100% of your screen (as the image aspect ratio allows) for viewing the image. Media viewer facilitates viewing images while providing basic actions that the casual user needs while viewing an image without the need for additional navigation, as exemplified below.
Moving through a collection of images is important for many different purposes (our data shows that about 35% of image views for Media Viewer are produced by using next/previous controls). In addition of media display purposes, Media Viewer provides shortcuts about the next logical steps to do once you viewed an image (e.g., download, share or reuse) and guidance (e.g., how to attribute). This has been optimised for repetition when going through a sequence of images by allowing to keep the download panel open. If you imagine going through the picture of the year http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Picture_of_the_Year#mediaviewer/File:Gl%C3%BChwendel_brennt_durch.jpg collection and saving all images you like, you can see that Media Viewer avoids some extra navigation steps between the collection and the detailed view (being it the File Page or the Slideshow).
Pau
On Wed, Oct 15, 2014 at 5:03 PM, Gergo Tisza gtisza@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Wed, Oct 1, 2014 at 1:37 AM, Gnangarra gnangarra@gmail.com wrote:
ok I'm a little late to the party but why doesnt media viewer just use the same very effective layout of the category slide show thats currently operating on Commons given it has already solved all these issues
I am even more late but just wanted to point out that the problems in MediaViewer were identified by click tracking and user tests; before performing those, the interface did not seem problematic. Given that no such analysis has been done on the category viewer gadget, I would be skeptical towards claims that it performs any better.
(More generally, I think there is a tendency in the community to be overconfident in the effectiveness of the current interface, and a tendency in WMF to dismiss it off-hand. More curiosity as to what works well and what not would be a welcome change on both sides.)
Commons-l mailing list Commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
Gergo Tisza, 15/10/2014 17:03:
More generally, I think there is a tendency in the community to be overconfident in the effectiveness of the current interface, and a tendency in WMF to dismiss it off-hand. More curiosity as to what works well and what not would be a welcome change on both sides.
+1, let's make this a motto stably included in a ns0 page somewhere.
Nemo