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.

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


 * Mobile Editing
 * Discovery
 * 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


 * ''' Echo
 *  Flow 
 * Community process workflow interviews (June 2015)
 * Flow Moderated Testing, November, 2014: talk pages and Flow
 * Finding content inside Flow / Discussions: March 2015


 * Guerrilla Testing, March 24, 2015: Description editing


 * 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)

Reading

 * Reading in General
 * Reader Behavior Exploratory Research (February - March 2015)


 * Guerrilla Testing for iOS App


 * Acquisition of new users:
 * Onboarding new Wikipedians
 * Guided tours


 * ''' 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


 * ''' 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

Other Design Research Projects

 * REFLEX

Project Queuing

 * Planning board
 * Backlog board

Task size definitions:
 * Extra small: < 1 day


 * Small: ~ 1 day


 * Medium: 2 days


 * Large: ~1 week


 * Extra large: ~2 weeks

Archives of Broader Wikimedia Research Team
Wikimedia Research Portal

Methodologies for Design Research

 * 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

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 