Wikimedia Apps/Team/Android/Communication

Background
In February 2021, the Android team released the first version of talk pages in the app. This was as the initial phase of what will be a part of a year long project to improve communication in the Android app. The Epic (big plan) for the original work is available at T252556. You can find the full Android roadmap.

This project page will be updated as we take investigate the limitations of communication through Android and ensure we follow community conventions at the same time as we find a good communication experience for mobile devices.

The current communication-related features in Android includes article and user talk pages, watchlists and Echo notifications. While these features are available, we are aware they can be improved and plan to make improvements during the Communication phase of our roadmap.

How to follow along
We have created T273253 as our Phabricator Epic to track early improvements to the talk pages in the Android app before we do our full evaluation. We welcome feedback as we are building on the first release and plan to do an in-depth investigation of communication through Android devices April – June 2021 in order to make improvements through next year.

December 2021- Talk Page Survey Results (Experienced Users), IP Notifications and Reading Focus Mode
As a follow up to the survey from new users the team investigated remedies for improvements. One investigation included investigating the viability of not using the RestBase endpoint for retrieving talk pages and instead using the regular MediaWiki API to enhance performance of talk pages. As detailed in T295687, our team is unable to execute this at this time because it requires an improvement of the performance of change propagation and/or cache updates of the REST endpoint. We have put in a request for back end teams to pick this up with the hopes of faster talk page performance in the future.

The team discovered that talk page notifications do not always lead users to the right subject line, rather it takes them to the general talk page. This bug was caused by changes to the DiscussionTools project. The team has been collaborating with the Editing Team to fix this bug and the work is documented in T296018. As of December 15, 2021, IP editors in the Android app will receive Talk Page notifications T291481, which is important for reaching anonymous editors.

Users are now able to filter notifications by Wiki and notification type in the home center T294035, while also accessing settings to update preferred language settings in the filter view.

Furthering our desire of promoting collaboration, can now see their notifications even while offline T287955.

In October the team launched a survey to learn about the desires of experienced users for their talk pages experience in the Android app. We specifically surfaced the survey in the app to English Wikipedia Talk page users in Nigeria and India, Arabic and French Wikipedia talk page users in DR Congo, Mali, Morocco and Egypt, as well as Japanese Wikipedia editors and Hindi Wikipedia Editors and received responses from 54 participants. The full results can be found at the bottom of the protocol page. The key takeaways from this survey was that users believe Talk pages need better onboarding and education on how to use them and the distinction between article and user talk pages. There were requests for comprehensive communication flows when edit changes occur, and easier ways for users to seek assistance. Users requested an ability to share talk pages, which has been implemented in T295808. The lack of talk page discoverability in the article view was further highlighted in this survey. Respondents to the survey, expressed the importance of encouraging users to review an article talk page when making an edit. It was highlighted that users involved in a talk page message should be pinged when someone has replied to them, which doesn't currently occur unless the user replying puts in the ping command for the user they would like to reach. Further, positive reinforcement and support for deleting and archiving messages that are no longer relevant were also surfaced as desired features.

What was very evident in our research was the flexibility needed so that our users unique needs are met when they are reading an article and prefer not to see editing tools compared to when they may want to edit and have a desire for specific editing tools or talk pages. With the requests for flexibility in mind, the team will release and test a customizable favorites bar, which will allow users to choose which links appear in the bottom favorites bar in article view versus which things should go to the overflow menu and reading focus mode, a feature that hides the bottom favorites toolbar on scroll as well as the edit pencils and call to actions. Reading mode will be off by default but accessible via Themes. The team will ensure users are able to recall how to turn read mode off so that we don't impede anyone's ability to edit.

November 2021- Talk Page Survey Results (New Users), EditNotices and Release of Notifications Home Center
Building on the work we did to notifications last month, our team improved the notifications home center by adding search and filter functionality. We also improved the readability of the home center and added a new tabs called mentions, which includes all notifications that are generated by an action from other users, the categorization follows the policy that defines mention notification types.

The team ran a usability test of our existing talk page experience on usertesting.com with new users to understand how discoverable talk pages are and if users understand how to differentiate between user and article talk pages. Additionally, we wanted to know what elements work well even in low context. Finally, we hoped to identify possible opportunities for improvements that we could surface to experienced users in the survey we ran in app. Our test users edited on Arabic, French, Hindi, Indonesian and Japanese Wikipedia. From the test we learned the following things worked:
 * Users understood how to create new topics and reply to threads
 * Participants mostly understood that the article messages were from other users.
 * Participants described what a revert is, in their own words, well
 * Link in the footer: Some participants accessed talk pages via the link in the footer intuitively
 * Discovery of notifications: the work on the new placement for notifications paid off, people had no issues discovering the bell icon

From the test we learned the following things do not work well in our existing experience:
 * Users had a difficult time finding the link to article talk pages in the overflow menu, some participants tapped the edit pencil to access talk pages
 * There was a slow performance when attempting to submit on when using talk pages on Japanese Wikipedia
 * Users didn't understand the distinction between how to use article talk pages and user talk pages
 * There was a disorientation when tapping items within notifications home and navigating to Commons Talk Pages
 * Lack of understanding for the diff view and of edit summaries
 * At times there were no active keyboard and the reply button was missing

Based on the results of the test, the team generated investigative tasks, which can be found linked to this Epic on Phabricator.

We fixed some bugs which includes presenting edit notices and fixing a bug where users lost their open tabs.

October 2021- Outcomes of the ABC Test, More updates to Notifications and the launch of Talk Pages work
Last month we conducted research to understand how to improve the notifications experience for our users. Our goal was to ensure people are accurately receiving important messages from other users and the system, and able to understand and engage with the messages they receive. In last month's update we shared the outcomes of our qualitative research. We now have the outcomes of our ABC test where we evaluated which iconography and placement of said iconography in the app would best improve discoverability of notifications.

By changing the placement of the notifications iconography from the overflow more menu to the top navigation bar we saw an increase in interactions by 121.4%. The activity data was isolated by a seven day average of daily unique users. We further evaluated the impact on our target user groups to ensure our decision making is equitable. Based on this evaluation we saw an increase in interactions by 102.19% for users in Nigeria and India using English Wikipedia, 108.90% for users in Morocco, Egypt, DR Congo, and Mali on French and Arabic Wikipedia, 77.23% for Hindi Wikipedia users, 74.07% for Indonesian Wikipedia uers, 147.83% for Japanese Wikipedia users. Based on this information, we made a final decision of ensuring the notifications icon lived in the top bar.

Our next test evaluated if our existing more icon, bell icon or the inbox icon would yield more clicks. Our data indicated the inbox had the highest level of clicks overall and across user groups, the bell icon was the next most favorable icon, followed by more. However, within our target user groups, Indonesian Wikipedia editors and Hindi Wikipedia editors, marginally clicked the more icon over the bell icon. Although the inbox was most favorable, when compared to our qualitative feedback, we learned that users expected to enter an actual inbox when clicking an inbox, and the bell icon was more closely associated with notifications. Additionally, across other platforms, the bell icon is being used to indicate notifications, so for the sake of parity and to not confuse users, our team chose the bell icon.

The next phase of our communication work is to improve the talk page experience in the Android app. While we currently have talk pages, it is important that the experience graduates from functional for experienced users to easy to use by all users, especially those that may need to use them the most. In order to better learn what gaps exist, we are launching two surveys. One survey will be conducted on usertsting.com with new users, so that we may learn what gaps exist for users that may be new to the Android app. You can find that protocol on Phabricator. The other will be for more experienced users that have visited and used talk pages in the Android app before. You may view the survey for experienced users at Wikimedia Apps/Team/Android/Communication/UsertestingOctober2021 and answer questions on talk page.

We also made minor upgrades which included improving how we handle the topmost welcome message on user talk pages, which can be reviewed on Phabricator.

September 2021 -In-app Notifications and Survey Results
The outcomes of the qualitative survey collecting feedback about Notifications can be found on the protocol page.

Through our qualitative research we learned:
 * The top right positioning of the notification icon was most popular
 * The bell icon was most closely associated with notifications. While the inbox tray was a popular choice, it was associated with messages and notifications span beyond human-to-human contact
 * Users were in favor of having a mention tab in the Notifications Home Center
 * Users generally found filtering capabilities within the notifications home center important
 * There was a request for more context for reverts

To compliment the qualitative feedback we've received, the team launched an ABC test to get the final quantitative confirmation of how the discoverability of notifications changes if a bell icon is used in the top right hand corner when compared to the more and inbox tray. The initial details are available in Phabricator via ticket T290995.

As requested by the community and based on the survey feedback the team made notifications more discoverable in the article view.

The final iconography will be decided in October after our ABC test.

In addition, the team released the following minor updates:
 * An ability to to delete individual items in recent searches T276770
 * Enable users to undo a talk page message a few seconds after posting and return to edit mode to make changes T287594
 * Expose the last time a talk page has been edited so that users can easily review the edit history T274836and T287593

August 2021 - Minor Bug Fixes
In August, the Engineers focused primarily on tech debt and bug fixes raised by users as the rest of the team processed feedback from the community to turn them into features.

26 July 2021 - User testing notifications placement and workflows
The team is requesting feedback about potential changes to notification placement in the Android app and the subsequent workflows. Please visit the user testing protocol on MediaWiki and share your feedback on the talk page.

12 July 2021 - Improving the discoverability of talk pages
We currently support all notifications and alerts in the Android app.

However, when users are in the app, notifications are not easily discoverable; FY 2021-2022 we seek to improve this experience.

Our July 2021-September 2021 update will improve the in-app discoverability of notifications and enhance notifications on the lockscreen. By December 2021, we will enhance the notification home center to build an intuitive inbox and interface. We will design and build with consistency of Android system elements in mind to ensure that the feature feels at home on its platform.

July 2021 through December 2021 focuses on logged-in users that have made at least one edit, however we will build on our preliminary work from the months prior to enhance alert awareness for logged-out users in the beginning of 2022. We plan to explore onboarding experiences to communication tools for users that are logged out. This will be in addition to other positive reinforcements and onboarding workflows for logged-in users.

10 May 2021 - Updates to error handling messages
The team made a few updates to the way error messages are handled within the app, which will be released in production in the coming weeks. The exact changes we made can be followed in T170726, T276142, and T276139.

We recognize there are further improvements to be made, but have received feedback that the changes so far are enough of an improvement that it can be incorporated in a release as we continue to improve how error messages are handled and the communication systems in the Android app.

30 March 2021 - Updates to native talk pages and watchlist
The team collaborated across functions to review the recently released talk pages and watchlist to evaluate possible improvements. The following changes were made in the most recent release:


 * Ensure the reply button doesn't obstruct the view of the compose message line when refreshing
 * Move article talk page link placement from the bottom of an article to the drop down menu and add watchlist access to article drop down
 * Make the "About this Article" more prominent in the table of contents
 * Wrapped talk pages subject line

Other things we plan to modify include:


 * Ensuring inline replies show up in line instead of at the bottom of section.
 * Dependency: API from a back end team
 * Redesign or reconsider blue dot indicators to display what hasn't been read on talk pages
 * Expose the last time a talk page has been edited
 * Build onboarding for watchlist and talk pages

2 February 2021 - Release of watchlist and talk pages
We're excited to present our latest release of the Wikipedia Android app, available now on the Google Play Store (or as a standalone download for devices without Google). Here are the major highlights from this update:


 * Watchlists: Your watchlist is now accessible from the main screen when you are logged in. Tap the "More" menu at the bottom and select "Watchlist".  If you have multiple languages selected in the app, the watchlist screen will merge your watchlists from those language wikis. You can also choose which languages to show by tapping the language icon in the toolbar at the top.  Tap any of the items in your watchlist to see a detailed diff screen for the selected change.  And of course, to add any article you're currently reading to your watchlist, tap the top-right menu in the toolbar, and select "Add to watchlist".
 * Talk pages: Article talk pages and User talk pages are now presented natively.  When reading an article, the corresponding talk page is accessible by scrolling to the bottom and selecting "View talk page".  User talk pages can be accessed from various places where user interactions might happen, including your watchlist, various push notifications (e.g. messages left by other users on your talk page), and other users' and article talk pages.

In addition to these major updates, this release has plenty of bug fixes, design refinements, and performance optimizations. Check it out, and as always, we welcome your feedback! We are asking for watchlist feedback on Phab task T273254 and talk page feedback on T273253. You can also leave feedback on this talk page.

Special note: This release is dedicated to the memory of our late colleague and friend Bernd Sitzmann, a brilliant developer and a wonderful person, without whom the app wouldn't be what it is today. He will be missed.

December 2018 - Echo Notifications on Android
In 2018, the Android team set out to add Echo Notifications to Android. By the end of the project the following notification types became available:


 * System- Messages from the system
 * Milestone-  Edit counts being reached
 * Thanks- Someone thanks you for an edit
 * Revert- One- of your contributions were reverted
 * Talk Page- Messages from talk pages
 * Login- your login activities
 * Mention- Someone mentions you in page

Additionally, the team implemented poll notifications, which allows the app to use data to check for new notifications in the background. As of April 2021, this feature isn’t turned on by default.

Limitations for Push Notifications
There are some known blockers for real time push notifications that limited our original implementation approach. As a result of these limitations there is a ~10 minute delay to notifications.