[Labs-admin] Fwd: [Offline-l] Wikimed Mini release

[Chase Pettet]

Not sure if anyone else joined offline-l after wikimania but I thought this
was really interesting

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Stephane Coillet-Matillon <stephane at kiwix.org>
Date: Thu, Aug 24, 2017 at 2:38 AM
Subject: [Offline-l] Wikimed Mini release
To: mobile-l <mobile-l at lists.wikimedia.org>, Using Wikimedia projects and
MediaWiki offline <offline-l at lists.wikimedia.org>


[Cross-post]

A quick note to announce that Kiwix released this morning a new version of
the Wikimed App called Wikimed Mini [1]. It basically complements the
earlier app in that it is 90% smaller and should therefore make it easier
to download and store by users who need it most (50% of installs for the
English version happen on the Indian subcontinent; for the French one, 80%
are in Africa).


But apart from this PSA I wanted to share the thinking that went behind the
design of this particular app, as I’ve been told it could be of interest to
this list:

There basically were three reasons for this "mini" version:

1. When connectivity is an issue, size does matter. If you look at the 20+
main offline medical apps out there, you'll see that they all range in the
25-40Mb (the largest being 120Mb). Several of them have 1M+ downloads, and
even if I am no physician I'd say their content is rather minimal and that
WP content is far better: yet people download the other, smaller apps
rather than our gigantic, all-encompassing 1.2 Gb one;

2. You may have heard that thing about 60% of mobile readers not going past
the Lead section [2]. We did too, and took the drastic step of removing
everything below that - basically keeping only the lead part and infobox.
That saved us about 60%;

3. Then we looked at what was left and figured that infobox illustrations
weren't that helpful: either because they look good but are not very
informative, or because if they are in fact informative offline limitations
make it impossible to see more than a thumbnail. Don't get me wrong: the
ability to see high-res images comes high on the list of requests, but a
choice was to be made and that one was a low-hanging fruit. So we removed
the illustations as well, and now we're left with a 90% smaller app.

In spite of its size, the current Wikimed is rated higher (4.7) and kept
longer (75% retention at D30) that most apps (4.2/20%, respectively on
average): we’ll keep you posted on how the new app fares in comparison to
that.


Cheers,
Stephane



[1]  https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.
kiwix.kiwixcustomwikimedmini
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Which_parts_
of_an_article_do_readers_read





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-- 
Chase Pettet
chasemp on phabricator <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/p/chasemp/> and
IRC
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