Extension:GuidedTour/archive/Make your user experience easy to learn: a guided tour


 * Submission no. :


 * Title of the submission: Make your user experience easy to learn: a guided tour


 * Type of submission: presentation


 * Author of the submission: Matthew Flaschen and the E3 team


 * Country of origin: United States


 * Affiliation: Wikimedia Foundation


 * E-mail address:


 * Username: Superm401


 * Personal homepage or blog:


 * Abstract: GuidedTour is a new extension that makes it easy to develop guided tours. Leveraging a customized version of the Guiders.js library, GuidedTour allows guiding any process on a wiki.  On each step a tooltip displays, either pointing to a key page element or providing background information.  I'll explain how we've already successfully used GuidedTour to assist new editors on the English Wikipedia, and give a sneak preview of plans from both the Editor Engangement Experiments team and community.  Finally, I'll show how developers can use tours for their own extensions, and wikis can help users learn their processes.

GuidedTour is a new extension, developed by the Editor Engagement Experiments (E3) team, that makes it easy to develop guided tours. GuidedTour allows annotating any step-by-step process on a wiki. On each step, a tooltip, known as a guider, displays. Guiders provide relevant information and can point to a key part of the page. The tour can automatically progress to the next step based on the user's progress.
 * Detailed proposal:

GuidedTour is now enabled on 17 wikis, with internationalization. It also automatically positions guiders correctly on right-to-left wikis without any extra configuration.

I will explain how we have already successfully used GuidedTour to assist new editors. On the English Wikipedia, new editors were immediately shown a page, called GettingStarted, suggesting several tasks. In some cases, these tasks included a simple tour, showing them how to make their first edit on a suggested page. This resulted in a measurable increase in successful edits.

E3 has more plans for using tours to support active editing, especially by new users, some of which I will discuss. I will briefly describe some of the community tour ideas I am aware of. These include The Wikipedia Adventure, a text-based instructional game by Jacob Orlowitz (User:Ocaasi).

I will explain how other developers can use tours for their own extensions, with full internationalization support. Experienced editors can help new users learn their own wikis' processes, from making their first contribution to uploading an image.

Finally, I will discuss some of our plans for enhancing GuidedTour, and how these relate to Gadgets 2.0. I will make myself available after the presentation to assist people interested in making tours.

GuidedTour leverages a customized version of the Guiders.js library, developed by Jeff Pickhardt of Optimizely. In addition to providing MediaWiki-specific features, we have made enhancements to the core library and are working to share those with the upstream community.


 * Track:
 * Technology and Infrastructure


 * Length of presentation/talk: 25 Minutes


 * Language of presentation/talk: English


 * Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted?: Yes


 * Slides or further information (optional):


 * Special requests:

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 * 1) Ocaasi (talk) 12:33, 23 May 2013 (UTC)