Hi all,
Monte, Yuvi, Vibha, Moiz, Jared, Howie and I met today to talk about
refining the edit workflow on the apps.
The statement of the problem is that user testing has shown that in the
current workflow the preview step is not useful; people are not recognising
that it is a preview, not recognising the edit summary box is there, and
accidentally abandoning their edits because they think they've saved
already. This is related to the fact that there are too many steps in the
edit workflow. In particular, the call to action to "sign in and save" or
"save anonymously" was basically ignored by everyone who tested the app.
Our macro-level goal for the app is to get people to edit. Whether that's
by signing in and saving or by saving anonymously isn't as important to us
as *actually getting them to edit.*
Our course of action is therefore multi-faceted:
1. For the MVP we're removing the call to action to sign in and save.
Since people are ignoring it, it's not really serving any purpose in the
current workflow except to bloat it. This drastically reduces the number of
steps in the process.
2. We're flipping the edit summary box and preview around, so that when
you make a change and click next you see the edit summary on top. This
makes it clearer that your edit hasn't saved, it emphasises the canned edit
summaries that users responded positively to in the testing, and makes the
preview step feel more optional. We're also going to restyle this page
slightly to make it clearer.
The workflow for editing is now press edit > make change > press next >
enter edit summary (and optionally view preview) > save. This makes the
workflow much easier to use, and a lot clearer.
I realise that my description above isn't great; Vibha and Moiz are going
to create a mockup for it, and I'll share that on this list once we've got
it.
Thanks everyone!
Dan
--
Dan Garry
Associate Product Manager for Platform and Mobile Apps
Wikimedia Foundation