- *Website placement: *I think it is obvious the space the Book
Creator takes on the Left Hand tool bar is not enough to draw attention to
the feature. I wonder if we should attempt to have some sort of a "Save for
Offline Use" button on each article, which would then open a new window
into the collection creator screen? This could look similar to the "Share
this" links which exist on most information websites (for Facebook,
Twitter, email, etc.). This could be next to the "Print" button.
I totally agree with you that the space in the left hand tool bar is far
from ideal. Moreover, the whole process for starting the "Book creator" is
too cumbersome and wordy. How about something like the feedback box that
could appear on the bottom of every page? But of course it would be nicer
to have something that appears "above the fold".
So far I was not aware that there was a "Print" button in Wikipedia (new
skin?). If such a button existed, it would probably also be a great place
for the functionality.
No button exists yet; I meant the "Print" button which appears on a lot of
other websites (though not ours at this time).
- *Marketing: *Once we feel a bit more confident about usability, it
would be great to market the tool. We can do this in three phases:
- Phase 1: emails to different mailing lists announcing the
project, and asking for suggestions and feedback on the tools
We could set up a little project team that takes the input from the
community and creates some ui prototypes. Usually, you get more qualified
feedback if you confront users with a wireframe or a rough draft. When we
feel confident about the basic design we could implement the new features
and go for tests with a wider audience just as you suggested.
I like this idea. It would be great if we could set up a space - maybe on
MediaWiki.org - where we could flesh this out as a community. It would be
great if you could take the lead on getting this set-up and sending all
updates to this mailing list! Those of us most interested in being part of
the input team could watch the pages on MediaWiki and contribute to this
space. I think on this space we could also collaborate on the best
workflow, as Emmanuel suggested.
One thing Tomasz shared with me today is a UI project they are doing for
Mobile WIkipedia. They have a space called "Athena" set-up where they are
doing some prototypes. This is the sort of model I mean:
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Athena
- *Measurement*: clearly, we should have careful tracking of *books
created* and *downloads by file type* by day. @PediaPress: is this
available yet?
There are a few reports that are easily available (like total number of
downloads) and some that are a little more difficult to retrieve (like
downloads by file type). But so far none of this is available in public
repositories. I think we should implement a reporting infrastructure where
everybody can check the usage statistics (similar to
http://stats.grok.se/
).
But before we set up a reporting system we should decide what our goals
for the redesign are and how we could measure them.
Good point. But it would also be useful to get some relevant statistics
now, to help inform what the user experience actually IS? What stats do we
have that could inform this?
I would love to work on this project. Just as I said before - let's get
this started... :-)
Awesome! I hope others are excited and interested as well. This tool has
*huge* potential to bring more information to people around the world!
Jessie
--
*Jessie Wild
Global Development, Manager
Wikimedia Foundation
*