Hello all,
our very positive revenue perspective (we have already exceeded our fundraising targets for the fiscal year, and received the additional $2M from Google) allows us to do something we've hoped to be able to do: make our investment in user experience work permanent, as opposed to releasing most of the current user experience team and ending the project.
It makes obvious sense for any major website to have a permanent team focused on user experience improvements in the broadest sense. This includes eliminating obvious barriers to entry, but beyond that, we want to improve the experience as a whole for both readers and editors.
We're now referring to this work as "user experience" (UX) work, which includes usability.
Naoko will be Head of UX Programs, while Trevor will be the lead front-end developer on the team. Congratulations to both of them. :-) Naoko is currently assessing the remaining contracts and will share further information as these decisions are finalized.
In the immediate future post-April, we'll be concerned with tying up loose ends from the usability initiative, and finishing functionality that we had to put in the parking lot. We'll work on a roadmap and staffing plan for 2010-11 and beyond as part of our business planning process.
Our long-term focus will be determined in significant part based on the recommendations from the strategic planning process; see especially the community health recommendations:
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Task_force/Recommendations/Community_heal...
While we haven't finalized priorities, the single biggest piece of work is likely going to be the transition to a rich-text editor as the default editing environment for all Wikimedia Foundation wikis. But, user experience to us also means assessing how people self-organize and communicate in Wikimedia projects, how they get stuff done, and how they read and navigate our projects. Even among the areas of work we've already identified, there's enough to keep us busy for many years. :-)
Please note that the original usability initiative hasn't concluded yet. The team is working on its final release, which will include some of the most-anticipated changes, including collapsing of templates to simplify the editing interface, and the production release of the new feature-set to all users. As always, we'll continue to communicate progress through http://blog.wikimedia.org/ and http://techblog.wikimedia.org/, and feedback and participation is welcome at http://usability.wikimedia.org/.
All best, Erik
On Tue, Mar 2, 2010 at 1:14 AM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hello all,
our very positive revenue perspective (we have already exceeded our fundraising targets for the fiscal year, and received the additional $2M from Google) allows us to do something we've hoped to be able to do: make our investment in user experience work permanent, as opposed to releasing most of the current user experience team and ending the project.
It makes obvious sense for any major website to have a permanent team focused on user experience improvements in the broadest sense. This includes eliminating obvious barriers to entry, but beyond that, we want to improve the experience as a whole for both readers and editors.
This is fantastic news indeed! I am looking forward to seeing this initiative go much further than was planned at first.
Cheers,
Delphine
Great news. Congrats for the team which gets now a broaden opportunity to spread their strength. I'm thrilled to look forward to see this initiative go further, and experience the website renewed by the team, as both an editor and an user.
On Tue, Mar 2, 2010 at 9:14 AM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hello all,
our very positive revenue perspective (we have already exceeded our fundraising targets for the fiscal year, and received the additional $2M from Google) allows us to do something we've hoped to be able to do: make our investment in user experience work permanent, as opposed to releasing most of the current user experience team and ending the project.
It makes obvious sense for any major website to have a permanent team focused on user experience improvements in the broadest sense. This includes eliminating obvious barriers to entry, but beyond that, we want to improve the experience as a whole for both readers and editors.
We're now referring to this work as "user experience" (UX) work, which includes usability.
Naoko will be Head of UX Programs, while Trevor will be the lead front-end developer on the team. Congratulations to both of them. :-) Naoko is currently assessing the remaining contracts and will share further information as these decisions are finalized.
In the immediate future post-April, we'll be concerned with tying up loose ends from the usability initiative, and finishing functionality that we had to put in the parking lot. We'll work on a roadmap and staffing plan for 2010-11 and beyond as part of our business planning process.
Our long-term focus will be determined in significant part based on the recommendations from the strategic planning process; see especially the community health recommendations:
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Task_force/Recommendations/Community_heal...
While we haven't finalized priorities, the single biggest piece of work is likely going to be the transition to a rich-text editor as the default editing environment for all Wikimedia Foundation wikis. But, user experience to us also means assessing how people self-organize and communicate in Wikimedia projects, how they get stuff done, and how they read and navigate our projects. Even among the areas of work we've already identified, there's enough to keep us busy for many years. :-)
Please note that the original usability initiative hasn't concluded yet. The team is working on its final release, which will include some of the most-anticipated changes, including collapsing of templates to simplify the editing interface, and the production release of the new feature-set to all users. As always, we'll continue to communicate progress through http://blog.wikimedia.org/ and http://techblog.wikimedia.org/, and feedback and participation is welcome at http://usability.wikimedia.org/.
All best, Erik -- Erik Möller Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
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This is great news! I'm thrilled that this important work can become a permanent priority for the Foundation. The usability work has already been a success, and continuing that work will be a major asset towards achieving Wikimedia's goals. I'm also particularly happy because although the Wiki*p*edia Usability project will end, we will be keeping this team, which may now focus less exclusively on one project. I suspect all community members who have built our other projects will be happy to see this as well.
- -Mike
Dear Delphine, Aphaia, Mike and those who congratulated us off the list,
Thank you for your kind words and encouragements. We, the user experience programs team, are very excited and grateful to be able to continue improving the usability and user experience of Wikimedia projects.
The Stanton usability project is in the final phase, but we are still developing one of the most complicated features we worked so far, collapsing and form-based templates. We are faced with a lot of challenges, but we hope to be able to share the prototype in coming weeks.
The success of the usability initiative so far could not have been possible without the strong support and constructive critiques from the community members who constantly participated in design discussion, prototype testing, provided feedback through the beta survey. I also want to acknowledge various community members who not only raised the usability to be address as high priority task, but actually took actions in improving the usability since 2005. To name a few, Openusability.org conducted usability study with Ellen Reitmayr in Germany in 2006 and published the result. Robert Stojnic implemented the proposed search result page in a matter of weeks after the mock-up was uploaded to the usability wiki. Kozuch and Mephiles602 constantly helped maintain the usability wiki in addition to participating the discussion of new features and designs. Nihiltres, who was the member of 2005 WikiProject Usability, reminded us when our beta stopped working on iPhone. Cbrown tested RTL display and files a bug. Aphia found a bug in Japanese prototype. Cary and Mike jumped in when there were severe incidents of vandalism on the usability wiki. They all contributed more than my simple list here, but what I want to say is they all made a difference in our project. The list goes on and on, and I am only naming a few folks here, who came to my mind while I type this email. (Forgive me for the names I have omitted here in advance.)
Multimedia usability project continues while the Stanton usability team shifts the focus from simplifying the editing interface to rich text editor and a research of social interactive component of the user experience. Strategy Planning Team published rich contents under Community Health, which we will be studying carefully and determine which area we should focus first.
Thanks again for your encouragements. It is great to be part of the permanent member of the Wikimedia community. :-)
Cheers,
- Naoko
On 2 March 2010 09:19, Naoko Komura nkomura@wikimedia.org wrote:
The Stanton usability project is in the final phase, but we are still developing one of the most complicated features we worked so far, collapsing and form-based templates. We are faced with a lot of challenges, but we hope to be able to share the prototype in coming weeks.
Usable WYSIWYG for templates will do *wonders* for contributions to en:wp. Wikitext has pretty much turned into impenetrable computer guacamole for non-technical prospective contributors. Even I find it daunting.
(I look forward to Greg Maxwell's bug reports, he's been doing rather well at breaking the Wikia WYSIWYG ;-)
- d.
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