Wikimedia Apps/Team/Android/2021Roadmap

Roadmap Overview
In March 2021, the Android team held a virtual offsite to evaluate past projects and features. We also evaluated the needs of different app user groups and where the Android team would focus building out for the next 3–5 years.

Roadmap Goals
Our goals through the completion of this roadmap are to


 * 1) Equitably fill knowledge gaps (help editors find and add missing information)
 * 2) Increase quality contributions to Wikipedia
 * 3) Retain and “graduate” app users (give them tools to become editors in varied ways, and not get stuck in simple app-specific workflows)
 * 4) Grow engagement in underrepresented countries



Roadmap phases
The roadmap is a multi-year effort broken into six phases to improve, expand and create functionality within the app, as well as make it work more like the expected Wikipedia experience – parity with other platforms. Throughout the implementation of the roadmap, the team will work with existing and new community members and app users to ensure we prioritize the most pressing needs of editors and readers using the app, as well as those impacted by said edits.

The phases of the roadmap include:

Phase 0 Architectural assessment
Phase 0 of our roadmap will take place May 2021 through the end of June 2021. During that time we will conduct a gap analysis of the app's current architecture to evaluate critical components that need improvement and what features need to be removed or arranged to accommodate improvements to notifications and new feature elements such as modes, curation, graduated onboarding, and customized tooling for patrollers, microcontributors, invited users and organizers. At the end of our assessment we will share a gap analysis and draft workflow for our primary target audiences with product leadership, existing community members and aspirational android app users. We will also establish baseline metrics for measuring progress towards equity and report any gaps in accessibility.

Phase 1 Communication improvements
To significantly increase contributions and suggested edit task types on Android, we must prioritize basic functionality for communication between our primary users within the app and those that encounter their edits. Preliminary steps towards basic and comprehensive communication functionality began in 2018 with the implementation of notifications in the Android app and was furthered in early 2021 by implementing native talk pages and watchlist. That work can be found at Wikimedia Apps/Team/Android/Communication. We will do further work to ensure notifications work well for everyone, so they know when they are being contacted, and continue working on the talk page.

Starting July 2021 we will begin working on Phase 1 of our roadmap building on previous work of communications functionality with the goal to retain our primary audience in the Wikipedia Android app. We will do this by ensuring users can adequately have a two-way communication with other contributors without exiting the Android app. It is our goal to optimize the communication experience for mobile users. We will know we were successful if we achieve the following:


 * Newer contributors can successfully request and receive meaningful and timely guidance, encouragement or feedback within 30 days of their first 10 edits and view said feedback without leaving the app
 * Organizers report an increase in engaging with invited users directly in the app instead of using third party options
 * Decrease in reports from users of leaving the Android app to communicate with other users

Work with us
In order to do all this and ensure we are going in the right direction we must partner with community members that use the Android app, and editors who are not app users but are impacted by the edits that come out of the Android app. Below are a few ways to collaborate with us


 * Follow the updates on this page to stay informed
 * Comment on our talk page
 * Email us at android-support@wikimedia.org
 * File tickets on Phabricator and tag #wikipedia-android-app-backlog

Understanding different users
Prior to the creation of our roadmap, we conducted user research to understand behavior patterns and gaps as an input to the development of our roadmap. Below are our quantitative findings.

Highlights of Contributor Analysis on Mobile Devices


Highlights of Edits made through the Android App