Hey everyone.

Last night I did some user testing of the editing workflow on both the Android and iOS apps. I had four new users and one experienced editor participating. The test was that I gave people the app on [[Main Page]] on testwiki, and said "There's an error on the bird article. Can you go and fix it?".

The full unabridged notes I took are available on this etherpad, but here's my summary.
  1. Search: Most people know straight away where the search bar is and what it does, although the actual functionality on iOS is a little clunky.
  2. Editing: Everyone immediately knew that the pencil icon would let them edit. They all knew how to fix the typo, and that they should press the save icon afterwards to save.
  3. Preview: In response to the preview, two of the four new users said "I'm done!" and handed the device back to me, unaware that their edit hadn't saved and they were only looking at a preview. The one experienced editor also expected it to save rather than present her with a preview, but she recognised that it was a preview.
  4. Edit summary box: Three of the four new users missed the edit summary box. When I pointed it out to them, one said to me "I wish when I pressed save, it had told me to fill in the edit summary box". The experienced editor found the suggested edit summaries in iOS incredibly confusing, but when I pointed out the edit summary box to the new users they found them really helpful.
  5. Call to action to sign in and save: The immediate reaction of all four new users to the CTA was to press "Save anonymously", with them not even reading the text to explain the difference. Only the experienced editor wanted to sign in and save.
I've got to dash to a meeting, so I'll follow-up later with what I think the take-home messages are.

Thanks!

Dan

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Dan Garry
Associate Product Manager for Platform and Mobile Apps
Wikimedia Foundation