Wikistats 2.0 Design Project/RequestforFeedback/Round2

Since Round1, the team has created a visual design and prototype. The visual design is available here and the prototype is live here. We have some questions we'll detail below, so please join us in reviewing the design. You can comment or answer the specific questions in the talk page (or via email to analytics-l)

Key Questions for Feedback:


 * How does the site look and feel now that you can interact with it?
 * Do breakdowns make more sense when you can see the graph change?

Dashboard
The Wikistats 2.0 dashboard aims to provide a quick year over year trend (where possible) for the default metric views of the detail page. It enables users to see trends across topics and languages such as the default Wikipedia - All Languages, a specific Wiki (ex. Spanish Wikipedia). Users can click on any overview stat (ex. Total Edits) to get into the detail page which provides the interactive metric views for each topic. The dashboard supports personalization by remembering the last Wiki that a user selected. This setting applies to both the dashboard and the detail pages as the most common use case we're supporting is a contributor looking for metrics around a specific wiki.

Design goal: Provide a quick and personalized overview of all topics that serves as a starting point for a deeper exploration of specific metrics.

Detail page design
The Detail page shows metric details for metrics in the Contributing, Reading, or Content categories. It uses color and category highlighting on the top navigation to indicate which category you are in. This is not reinforced too strongly because the metric selector and topic explorer both allow cross-category navigation.

Single Wiki
The Wikistats 2.0 detail page aims to provide an in-depth look at a specific metric while also supporting easy exploration of related or unrelated metrics. The detail page provides larger time spans, metric breakdowns and filters and additional comparison functionality than exists on the dashboard view.

Design goal: Provide a detailed view of a specific metric across Wikis and Languages over time. Support easy exploration of different metrics.

Comparison of Two Wikis
Users can compare up to ten Wikis from the detail page (not implemented in the prototype yet). When comparing Wikis, the breakdown feature becomes unavailable as the view would therefore become overly complex to digest. User can select Wikis for a specific language (Spanish Wiktionary) or Wikis across all languages (ex. Wiktionary - All Languages) (also not implemented in the prototype).

Wiki Selector UI
The Wiki selector enables users to choose a Wiki and Language (default is Wikipedia - All Languages) from either the dashboard overview or the detail page. The state of the control is saved using cookies so that when users come back they can continue looking at the last Wiki they had selected (cookies not implemented in prototype). A user can add up to ten Wikis to compare on the detail page which clears the default state of the drop down. After selecting a Wiki to compare, the user sees a color coded label reflecting the name of the selected Wiki and an 'X' in order to remove that Wiki.

Design goal: Enable users to easily switch the selected Wiki and add additional Wikis for comparison.

Topic Selector UI
The topic selector drop-down reflects the topics and sub-topics in which the metrics are grouped. The contents are framed as questions to encourage exploration of different topics and also make it easier for users to identify what they're looking for. This UI element acts as a shortcut to popular topics/questions without having to use the metric chart views and the primary navigation to find what you are looking for.

Design goal: Provide users a quick and easy short cut to finding answers to common questions across topics.

Filter and Breakdown UI
Breakdowns, when available, provide a different look at a summary data set. It allows users to see the components/categories that make up the total and then filter selected components on and off. Breakdowns are available when the user is viewing a single Wiki. If they select a second Wiki, the feature becomes unavailable. Certain metrics have one breakdown, while others have more than one. When more than one breakdown is available, the UI changes to a dropdown selector in which the user can choose which breakdown to view (not implemented in the prototype yet). Only one breakdown can be viewed at a time.

Design goal: Allow users to easily breakdown a single metric into its parts (for example Editing into the different activity levels that exist) where possible.

A note on the prototype
Data used in the prototype is 100% fake and meant to test the visual limits of the design. Also, certain features were left to the imagination of the reader, but will be implemented in the final version:


 * navigating, filtering, selecting date ranges, and all other data selection on the site will be reflected in the URL so bookmarks can be saved to any particular view
 * maps and line charts will be implemented
 * multi-wiki views will be implemented
 * date range selection will be improved according to the Round 1 feedback
 * the table view will be fully featured as we promised in Round 1 discussion, this part of the site is still being designed
 * After the first release, the next version of the site will have customizable dashboard widgets, as per suggestions in Round 1 feedback