Wikimedia Research/Design Research/Sandbox

What We Do
Design Research collaborates with Design, Analytics, Engineering, Product and the Wikipedia Community in order to help define what, at a high level teams should build and why (Generative Research). Also, Design Research supports iteration of concepts and functionality toward a usable and intuitive experience for users (Evaluative Research). Design Research, including both generative and evaluative research rely on a toolkit of research methodologies to provide findings informing decision making, concept development and concept iteration. Though the design team has been performing evaluative research to support iteration, design research is a new department at Wikimedia Foundation, and is growing and evolving to support the movement, the community and the foundation.

Project Queuing

 * |Trello Planning Board

Teams and their Projects, and the Design Research Done to Inform Design
Below, all the teams supported by design research are listed. Under each team is listed the projects the team is working on. You will find completed qualitative design research projects listed under each of the teams projects.

Growth
The purpose of the Growth team is to find ways to attract and retain Wikipedia editors. The team launched on April 16, 2012 as the "Editor Engagement Experiments" team, and in 2013 changed its name to more clearly reflect its goal (rather than our methodology).
 * Acquisition of new users:
 * Editor campaign
 * Anonymous editor acquisition
 * Account creation user experience
 * Research: Observing average web users creating account
 * Login redesign
 * Timestamp position modification


 * Activation & Retention of new users:
 * Guided tours
 * Onboarding new Wikipedians
 * Wikipedia article creation and a new Draft namespace
 * Post-edit feedback
 * Task suggestions

Reactivation of existing users:
 * Necromancy

Mobile

 * iPhone (mobile web)
 * iPhone App
 * Guerrilla Testing On-boarding Page and some discovery about readers and their thoughts on editing
 * Guerrilla Testing Table of Contents discovery


 * iPad (mobile web)
 * Heuristic Evaluation Visual Editor on iPad mobile web


 * Android Phone (mobile web)
 * Android Phone App
 * Android Tablet (mobile web)
 * Wikipedia Zero

Visual Editor

 * Heuristic Evaluation for Visual Editor (iOS)
 * Guerrilla Testing for iOS App
 * Guerrilla Testing iOS ipad Visual Editor


 * Mobile Web Visual Editor
 * Heuristic Evaluation for Mobile Web Visual Editor (Android)

User Experience / Beta Features

 * Winter / Fixed Header

Archives of Wikimedia Research Team (Quantitative Data)
Wikimedia Research Portal

Methodologies Used for Qualitative Design Research
Heuristic Evaluation / Cognitive Walkthrough

Guerrilla Research / Cafe Research

Unmoderated remote usability testing

Moderated remote usability testing

Contextual Inquiry

Design Ethnography

Tools used for Qualitative Design Research
Google Hang Outs OnAir - "Usability lab" for moderated, remote generative and evaluative research.

Usertesting.com — Unmoderated remote scripted usability testing

Conceptcodify.com — Unmoderated card sorting tool

SurveyMonkey.com —Unomderated survey tool with some analysis tools