I have run two sets of user tests with Winter to determine the usability of in-header page
action icons and whether or not users can easily recognize their personal tools menu and
the search box, especially after scrolling in the page. The results are not encouraging
for the in-header icons.
Two tests were run because the first test had some possible errors and confusions. The
second test (Winter Harness Two Electric Boogaloo) had some modifications to the flow to
avoid people getting lost on user talk pages (this was the result of the first version of
Harness Two telling them to click on the Speech Bubble icon in the top right if they were
lost - but they had scrolled to the top already). H2:EB corrected this by directing them
to the context action ribbon.
*
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Winter#Harness_Two:_Winter
*
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Winter#Harness_Two:_Electric_Boogaloo
* Only *one* user out of ten correctly used the in-header page action icons. Further, his
language indicated that he had some icon confusion: he thought that only a few icons were
added, and that existing ones were moved (e.g., history and edit were new, but the watch
list icon was still the same).
* Most users were unable to recognize the personal tools section as being "my
stuff" unless their username was ''also'' included. Once the
username was gone, it was invisible to them (with rare exceptions, and mostly by accident
then).
* No users had trouble with the search box. At all.
* Most users ended up using the context action ribbon and ignored other navigation hints.
* The in-header TOC might as well be invisible.
* At this point, with 10 testers and a 10% success rate, I'd say that the benefits of
putting page icons in the header are outweighed by the negatives of losing the username
for discoverability.
Discussion here:
https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Winter&workflow=rr0ke2…
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Brandon Harris, Senior Designer, Wikimedia Foundation
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