Wikimedia Research/Design Research

submit a design research request

Design Research is part of the Wikimedia Research team. We collaborate with Research and Data, Design, Engineering, Community Engagement and the Wikimedia 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).

What we do
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.

Participate in research!
If you would like to participate in future research, please opt in by completing this survey. (You will be taken to Qualtrics a third party software which has been vetted by our Legal and Contracts team. If you prefer not to use Qualtrics, please let us know you are interested in participating on the Discussion page for this page, by pressing the "Discussions" tab above.) From this survey we will understand what kind of research would be best to invite you to participate in. Also, if you have opted in to be a research participant and would like to opt back out, please send us an email at optoutresearch@wikimedia.org asking us to remove your information from our database of opted in participants.

Contextual inquiry

 * Reading/Mexico Readers Research  This research is informing several product teams, the Communications, Partnerships, and Community Resources Teams, as well as WMF as a whole.

Personas

 * Personas for product development (first round)

Workshops

 * Design Research Workshop

New editor experience

 * Teahouse long term new editor retention (October 2015 - May 2016)
 * Onboarding new Wikipedians
 * Guided tours

Editing
Design Research/Editing Vertical KIT meeting minutes
 * Editing, general
 * Editing Tasks Survey (February - March 2015)
 * Editing Tasks Card Sort (February - March 2015)


 * Editing on desktop/laptop
 * Moderated Sessions for VE discovery and usability, brand new and casual editors (March 2015)
 * UserTesting.com for basic editing tasks on VE, brand new editors (April 2015)
 * Usability testing citations dialogue on VE, brand new editors (May 2015)
 * Collection of VE Research
 * Heuristic Evaluation of image upload in the visual editor, (October, 2015)
 * Link Inspector Usability Testing November 2015


 * Mobile editing
 * Guerrilla Testing, March 24, 2015: Description editing


 * Discovery
 * Heuristic evaluation of visual editing on iOS and Android phones September 2015
 * Heuristic evaluation of visual editing on Android, Mobile October 2015


 * Mobile Contribution Discovery at Wikimania 2015


 * Guerrilla Testing for iOS iPad Visual Editor
 * Heuristic Evaluation for Visual Editor (iOS)
 * Heuristic Evaluation for Mobile Web Visual Editor (Android)
 * Guerrilla Testing for iOS iPad Visual Editor
 * Wikigrok
 * Guerrilla Testing Wikigrok Version A
 * Guerrilla Testing, November 2014: Wikigrok Version B
 * Guerrilla Testing, December 2014: Wikigrok Version B v.2


 * Task suggestions
 * '''Account creation:
 * Account creation user experience/User testing
 * Draft_namespace/Usability_testing
 * Collaboration
 *  Notifications
 * Notification page user research (March - April 2016)
 * Notification user survey (February - March 2016)
 * Cross-wiki notifications user research (October 2015 - January 2016)
 *  Flow 
 * Flow Moderated Testing, November, 2014: talk pages and Flow
 * Finding content inside Flow / Discussions: March 2015


 * Workflows
 * Community process workflow interviews (June 2015)
 * New editor curation tools experience interviews (September 2015)


 * Multimedia
 * Media Viewer
 * Media Viewer and Image Page View (July 2014)


 * Media Viewer Iteration Usability (August, 2014)
 * Media Viewer Enable / Disable Flow Usability testing (September 2014)
 * Media Viewer Validation, Moderated Testing (November, 2014)


 * Language
 * Content Translation campaigns user research (December 2015 - February 2016)
 * Article Recommendations for content translation user research (September - November 2015)

Reading

 * Reading in general
 * Student use of free online resources survey (January - June 2016)
 * Reader Behavior Exploratory Research (February - March 2015)


 * Guerrilla Testing for iOS App


 * ''' Apps
 * Guerrilla Testing On-boarding Page and some discovery about readers and their thoughts on editing
 * Guerrilla Testing Table of Contents discovery
 * Guerrilla Testing iOS App
 * Guerrilla Testing Reading Behavior (App Layouts) October 3, 2014
 * Guerrilla Testing iOS 5 Navigation October 2015


 * ''' Mobile Web Gather / Collections
 * Renaming Survey, March 2015
 * Heuristic Evaluation, May 2015
 * Usability/Understanding Moderated Sessions: Findings & Recommendations, June 2015


 * '''Link previews
 * [Research results]

Search and Discovery

 * Guerrilla Testing, December 17, 2014: Search and Search results

User experience / beta features

 * Winter
 * Winter / Fixed Header
 * Other User Tests


 * UI Standardization
 * UI library wants and needs analysis (December 2015 - March 2016)

Project queuing

 * Planning board
 * Backlog board

Task size definitions:
 * Extra small: < 1 day


 * Small: ~ 1 day


 * Medium: 2 days


 * Large: ~1 week

Project Names on Phab board
 * Extra large: ~2 weeks

Archives of broader Wikimedia Research Team
Wikimedia Research Portal

Design Research methodologies

 * Heuristic Evaluation / Cognitive Walkthrough
 * Guerrilla Research / Cafe Research
 * Unmoderated and moderated remote usability testing
 * Contextual Inquiry / Design Ethnography
 * Unmoderated and moderated task benchmarking
 * Participant Recruiting
 * Benchmarking REFLEX

Wiki methodologies

 * Add design research recordings to Commons (how to)

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

Usertesting.com — Unmoderated remote scripted usability testing (only 15 minutes per session)

Optimal Sort - Unmoderated card sorting tool

SurveyMonkey.com — Surveys with some analysis tools and simple logic.

Qualtrics - Surveys with more analysis tools and more complex logic capabilities.

SoGoSurvey - Survey Making Software with survey design support.

User testing reports
 category = User testing shownamespace = False 