[WikiEN-l] Usability Study Results (Sneak Preview)

[Ian Woollard]

On 08/05/2009, Parul Vora <pvora at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> Hi All!
>
> Thanks for all of the feedback, comments, and support. I just wanted to
> let you know that our full report (including highlight videos!!) is now
> up our the Usability Initiative's project wiki:
>
> http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/UX_and_Usability_Study
>
> - The Usability Team

Interesting!

I think that my take home message from this is:

a) Markup isn't very popular, everyone prefers WYSIWYG in theory (but
I know how very difficult it is)

b) Need more cheat sheet type stuff, in-your-face, practically
everywhere. When you create an article and when you edit- you need a
cheat sheet showing you how to do stuff, it *seems* to be how most
people work. Probably there should be a non blank create template with
examples of commented out references and a few headings

c) References are probably the hardest bit, and ultimately the most
important bit for the wikipedia. Anything that gets in the way of that
for new users is probably very bad.

d) The view button is probably more important than the save button,
and new editors should be pointed at it, because it shows/reassures
them whether they're doing it right.

-- 
-Ian Woollard

We live in an imperfectly imperfect world. Life in a perfectly
imperfect world would be *much* better. Life in an imperfectly perfect
world would be pretty ghastly though.