Reading/Web/Desktop Improvements/Repository/Research and design: Phase 2

The research activities and conversations in phase 1 helped us develop a better understanding the desktop interface (e.g. the design considerations, how it's used, how it has changed over time). It also helped us develop potential focus areas to further investigate and develop in phase 2, while still remaining open to new ideas. Our goals for phase 2 are to dig deeper into the focus areas through sketching, prototyping, and most importantly conversations with the community.

Research and design activities
In order to develop a deeper understanding of the focus areas we did the following activities for each:


 * Understanding past work, research, and experiments in respective focus areas
 * Obtaining general usage data about the respective focus areas
 * Sketching out and prototyping early ideas to help facilitate conversations
 * Forming early hypotheses
 * User interviews and other feedback at Wikimania
 * Community feedback via MediaWiki (happening soon)
 * User interviews with newcomers and casual readers (happening soon)

Regarding the structure of this page: I think it makes the most sense to have each focus area as a section, and then include the relevant information from the research and design activities within it.

Intended output
The output from phase 2 will include: sketches of specific interface improvements, reactions to sketches, a refined (i.e. more opinionated and informed) sense of which improvements are worth pursuing, a proposal for the sequence in which we could implement proposed improvements.

Past work, research, and experiments
...

General usage data
...

Sketches & prototype
...

Early hypothesis
...

User interviews at Wikimania
...