Inuka team

Introduction
Millions of people in emerging markets are coming online for the first time. It is imperative that our projects support and welcome new readers with access to knowledge that matches how they consume content on the internet.

The Wikimedia Foundation Inuka team, (formerly New Readers product team) was formed in July 2019 as part of the Product department. The team's mission is to deliver compelling experiences to Wikipedia readers in emerging markets, driving increased adoption and retention of Wikipedia in areas where internet use is rapidly growing.

Why the name Inuka?
Inuka is a Kiswahili word that means "to rise". Our team's mission is to raise the relevance of Wikipedia and other Wikimedia project content, to readers in Emerging Markets who are not accessing it yet. We chose to use a name from a language spoken in a part of emerging markets, in Africa, as a way to remind us of the audience we want to reach with our product choices. It is aspirational, and reminds the team that everything we build or implement, should be taking us towards the goal of raising worldwide readership.

Team Principles
When designing and building products for people in Emerging Markets, this team will:


 * Build for mobile-first experiences
 * Explore new form factors

Inuka Team Projects

 * Wikistories lets  editors create short, visual and reliable knowledge from Wikipedia for quick consumption and easy sharing. It will generate content in visual format to capture and distribute encyclopedic knowledge that is less suitable for long form articles. This new form of content contribution will take into account the constraints editors in emerging digital communities face when contributing content, and make it easier/more welcoming to contribute to knowledge successfully through mobile phones.


 * Wikipedia Preview allows Wikipedia content to be available as contextual information on 3rd party websites. Wikipedia Preview on partner websites would allow their readers to gain context while reading their pages and help people gain contextual knowledge from Wikipedia without necessarily clicking through to Wikipedia and learn more on Wikipedia with the option being available to read more on Wikipedia. Similar to page previews but for external sites. The code can be integrated into the site or if the external site uses Wordpress then they can use the Wordpress plugin. https://wordpress.org/plugins/wikipedia-preview/ Read more; https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Preview


 * Wikipedia for KAIOS a Wikipedia reading app for smart feature phones. Released in 2 versions - 1) for India 2) for rest of the world . Short video of the app.

Design Research

 * Wikistories Qualitative user research with clickable Wikistories prototypes in Indonesia with existing contributors gathered feedback from Indonesian editor communities on early concepts and designs for Wikistories, focusing on the experiences of potential Wikistories creators coming from the editing community
 * Qualitative user research with clickable Wikistories prototypes in Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa with new/potential contributors investigated the behavior of content creators and consumers in three African countries with distinct user behaviors and context especially relating to Wikimedia.
 * Qualitative research in India to understand why and how these users use these phones. We learnt that users chose to purchase these phones because they're affordable and allow access to apps like smartphones do. We also learned the challenges they face trying to read Wikipedia within the native mobile browser. Challenges included ability to scroll through content, text size on the screen, searching for content and lack of awareness that Wikipedia content is available in multiple languages

Quarterly Highlights
Q3 2021/2022

Wikistories


 * Finalised all user research report findings from 4 countries; Wikistories Africa Research (Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa), Wikistories Indonesia Concept Testing
 * Worked on having Wikistories instrumentation and evaluation.
 * Finished beta scope;  search, edit text, discovery, publish.
 * Got community buy in for Wikistories to be tested on Indonesian Wiki
 * Recruited a product ambassador to help in planning for the community based project campaign, keep community updated about Wikistories, and support GLAM in planning the Professional development event in Indonesia and translations
 * Wikimedia Indonesia confirmed their involvement for the GLAM professional development event in Indonesia.
 * Trained GLAM Oceania Partners on copyright and Commons uploads


 * Currently on active maintenance

Q2 2021/2022

Wikistories


 * Refined Wikistories visual prototype features using research feedback in Africa and Asia to shape additional design iterations
 * Completed research with existing contributors in Indonesia (96 participants)
 * Completed generative research in 3 countries in Africa;Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa with new contributors and readers (15 participants)
 * Conducted focused group discussion with at least 4 members of commons community members


 * Released Wikipedia Preview plugin in the Gutenberg editor feature. https://wordpress.org/plugins/wikipedia-preview/

Q1 2021/2022

Wikistories


 * At the beginning of the 2021/2022 fiscal year, the team explored concepts focused on visual content formats. The concepts explored, together with communities, the potential for contributing content, primarily over mobile, to create visual narratives.
 * Completed Wikistories early prototype planning & prototype creation; designing and delivering video prototypes in two languages, with two paths to create stories - on Wikipedia and Commons.
 * Selected 1 community; Indonesian to conduct research with existing contributors. The goal was to gather feedback from Indonesian editor communities on early concepts and designs for Wikistories, focusing on the experiences of potential Wikistory creators coming from the editing community
 * Selected 3 African countries; Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa to conduct research with new contributors and readers to understand behavior of content creators and consumers  with distinct user behaviors and context especially relating to Wikipedia.

Q4 2020/2021


 * Content engagement experience based on showing readers top read content in their country increased engagement with content by 15% overall.


 * Released the first version of a plugin on WordPress to make it simpler for websites who use it as their content management system (CMS) to integrate the feature.

Q3 2020/2021


 * Release version 1.6.0 to the KaiStore that introduced the ability to share an article URL, migration to our new analytics service and improved localization.
 * Launched a content engagement experience in Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda and Pakistan, showing readers top read Wikipedia content in their country on the app homepage.


 * Received feedback from websites on Wikipedia Preview and how it works as well as guidance on how to integrate it on their websites.
 * Received requests to create a WordPress plugin since majority of the websites we were talking to about the feature use WordPress it as their content management system.

 Q2 2020/2021 


 * Release the Wikipedia app for KaiOS on the KaiStore, to users around the world where KaiOS phones are available
 * Run a usability study in India where we learned of the challenges users were facing within the app. The main areas for improvement were in the search experience, and simplifying the onboarding process and allowing easier use of the feature that allows changing text size
 * Had 1.6 million app downloads at the end of Q2


 * Websites can now integrate Wikipedia Preview by following the instructions on GitHub: https://github.com/wikimedia/wikipedia-preview

Education


 * Kicked off design research with education experts in government, international NGOs and edtech companies

 Q1 2020/2021 


 * Released the first version of the Wikipedia app to KaiOS users in India who use JioPhones.
 * Introduced support for RTL languages
 * Updated copy for onboarding
 * Improved image gallery
 * Performance and security optimizations


 * Created a demo site to demonstrate how Wikipedia Preview (WP) works. The site shows how Wikipedia Preview works in multiple languages, both LTR and RTL. This experience is best seen on a mobile phone.
 * Updated the Wikipedia Preview design style to improve how the Wikipedia logo and icons are displayed

Education


 * Framing what research we can carry out with educators, teachers and parents to identify product interventions.

Q4 2019/2020


 * Introduced a feature where when KaiOS users in India want to select their preferred language, regional languages are shown first on the list https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T247255
 * Fixes to support how the app works on Jiophone 2 which has a qwerty keyboard rather than a candybar keyboard https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T248285 https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T248443 https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T250642
 * Allow users to provide feedback from within the app https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T236317


 * User testing on how users would discover that Wikipedia Preview is available on a website
 * Began framing what the Wikipedia Preview experience would look like on mobile phones https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T250796

2020/2021 plans
The past year was focused on building the Inuka team with a designer, two engineers and a technical program manager onboarded in the third quarter. The team also spent time identifying potential opportunities and focused work on the development of the beta version of the Wikipedia app for KaiOS.

In the 2020/2021 fiscal year, the team's priorities are:


 * To launch the beta version of the Wikipedia for KaiOS app. You can follow the progress of work on KaiOS on phabricator with the tag #kaios-wikipedia-app
 * To extend Wikipedia access to 3rd party sites through the development and piloting of Wikipedia Preview which shows previews of Wikipedia content
 * Work with communities to understand how we can serve readers in emerging markets better
 * Explore what contributions the team can make to Education based on the impacts of covid on the education sector

2019/2020 plans
In the 2019/2020 fiscal year, the team's priority is to add new form factors and localized content to substantially extend product experiences in order to grow readership worldwide.

The team plans to do this in the following ways:


 * 1) Design a custom Wikipedia app experience for smart feature phones
 * 2) Partner with communities to make the mobile web main page more useful to readers in Emerging Markets through new tools
 * 3) Extend Wikipedia experiences to external products

Initiative 1: Design a custom Wikipedia app for smart feature phones
Smart feature phones are reported to be in 100 million devices around the world. Based on the KaiOS platform, smart feature phones allow users to experience mobile apps in a similar fashion to apps on Android/iOS.

The experience of users on the Wikipedia mobile web is challenging because of the form factor of a feature phone with a none-touch screen. The team will build an experience to allow readers to easily access written knowledge in a form that fits the device.

Initiative 2: Make the mobile web main page more useful
The mobile web main page in many smaller wiki communities hardly changes as it requires substantive effort from community members to keep it up to date on a daily basis. The main page could be a great channel for readers to discover content that is useful and meaningful to them. The team will explore features that make it possible to increase the relevance of content for readers on the main page.

Initiative 3: Extend Wikipedia experiences to external products
The team will explore and experiment with making it possible to read and interact with Wikipedia content outside of Wikipedia.