Reading/Web/Desktop Improvements/Updates/de

: New search widget live on pilot wikis, A/B test in progress for logged-in users
We are happy to announce that our new search widget is now available on all of our current pilot wikis by default. The new search functionality optimizes the search experience by providing context on search results, such as images and descriptions, making it easier to find the correct results.

We are also performing an A/B test on pilot wikis, for logged-in users only. The A/B test provides the new widget for 50% of logged-in users and compares it to the old search for the remaining 50%. The results of the test will allow us to measure the success of the feature and to identify areas for improvement and iteration. The test will run for 2 weeks, after which, we will analyze and publish the results.

: Das neue Such-Widget und andere allgemeine Updates
Während der letzten Monate haben wir an dem neuen Such-Widget gearbeitet, das mehr Kontext zum eingegebenen Suchbegriff bieten soll, beispielsweise Bilder und Beschreibungen. Hier gab es einige Verzögerungen, deshalb werden wir das neue Widget voraussichtlich im Februar ausrollen.

Wir haben auch begonnen, uns einige Daten sowohl über das Projekt zur Verbesserung der Desktop-Umgebung im Ganzen als auch über einzelne Features einmal näher anzuschauen. Wir haben einen Bericht über die Nutzung der wegklappbaren Sidebar veröffentlicht. Den Daten zufolge neigen ausgeloggte Benutzer eher dazu, die Sidebar eingeklappt zu lassen als eingeloggte. Diese Ergebnisse haben uns darin bestätigt, dass die Sidebar in der endgültigen Fassung voraussichtlich für eingeloggte Benutzer standardmäßig offen sein wird, während sie für ausgeloggte standardmäßig geschlossen bleibt.

Außerdem haben wir begonnen, uns anzuschauen, wie oft eingeloggte Benutzer die neue Oberfläche in den Test-Wikis per opt-out abschalten. Die durchschnittlichen Opt-Out-Raten für alle eingeloggten Benutzer lagen zwischen 1,78 % auf euwiki und 4,09 % auf hewiki. Unter den aktiven Autoren lag die Spanne zwischen 5 % und 14 %. Wir werden uns diese Statistiken in den nächsten Wochen noch etwas eingehender anschauen.

Und schließlich möchten wir noch eine kurze Timeline der nächsten Monate weitergeben:


 * Februar 2021 – Installation des neuen Such-Widgets in den Pilot-Wikis; deren Liste wird um die Wikipedias auf Portugiesisch, auf Türkisch, auf Koreanisch und auf Serbisch sowie um die deutschsprachige Wikivoyage erweitert.
 * Februar 2021 – Zweite Runde des Prototypen für eingeloggte Benutzer. Es wird eine zweite Runde des Prototypen für den Header und für das User-Menü unter den eingeloggten Benutzern während des Februars geben. Wir bitten alle um Tests und um Rückmeldungen!
 * März 2021 – Derzeit konzentrieren wir uns auf die Schalter zum Wechseln der Sprache. Die Neuentwicklung soll im März auf den Pilot-Wikis installiert werden.

September 2020: Neue Platzierung der Suchleiste auf allen Wikis verfügbar
Wir haben die neue Platzierung der Suchleiste in allen Projektwikis freigegeben. Sie steht standardmäßig für alle Benutzer in den Early-Adopter-Wikis bereit. Die Benutzer aller anderen Projektwikis können sie in ihren Einstellungen aktivieren.

Zu der neuen Platzierung der Suche führen wir einen A/B-Test unter den eingeloggten Benutzern auf den Early-Adopter-Wikis durch.

Juli 2020: Wegklappbare Navigationsleiste, maximale Breite und neuer Seitenkopf jetzt verfügbar für alle Benutzer auf euwiki, fawiki, frwiktionary, euwiki und ptwikiversity
Auf den Wikipedias auf Baskisch, Farsi und Hebräisch und auf den Wikiversitys auf Französisch und Portugiesich haben wir den neuen Vector-Skin als Standard installiert. Bis auf weiteres beinhalten die Neuerungen eine wegklappbare Navigationsleiste, maximale Breite und den neuen Seitenkopf. Für Feedback und Fragen steht die Diskussionsseite zur Verfügung.

Juli 2020: Wegklappbare Navigationsleiste, maximale Breite und neuer Seitenkopf jetzt als Einstellung auf allen Projektwikis verfügbar
Die wegklappbare Seitenleiste, maximale Breite und der neue Seitenkopf stehen jetzt auf allen Projektwikis als Einstellung bereit. Sie können über das Aussehen-Tab in den Einstellungen genutzt werden, wenn man die Legacy-Vector-Option abschaltet. Wenn man den neuen Skin einmal aktiviert hat, werden alle zukünftigen Updates verfügbar sein, sobald sie fertig sind. Für Feedback und Fragen steht die Diskussionsseite zur Verfügung.

Unsere erste Veränderung, die wegklappbare Navigationsleiste, erlaubt es den Benutzern, die längliche Menüleiste auf der linken Seite wegzuklappen. Wir meinen, dass diese Veränderung die Bedienbarkeit der Oberfläche verbessert, weil man sich dadurch besser auf den Inhalt der Seite konzentrieren kann – beim Lesen, beim Bearbeiten und beim Moderieren.

Unsere zweite Veränderung führt eine maximale Zeilenlänge für unsere Inhalte auf Artikel- und Diskussionsseiten ein. Studien haben gezeigt, dass eine begrenzte Seitenbreite für die Präsentation der Inhalte besser ist. Außerdem sinkt die Belastung für das Auge beim Lesen auf vom Bildschirm. (Siehe die FAQ für eine Liste der einschlägigen Literatur.)

June 2020: Collapsible sidebar on officewiki, new header, and feature descriptions
We deployed our collapsible sidebar on officewiki and testwiki. You can see it by going to either of those projects, or by appending the url parameter ?useskinversion=2 to the url on any project.

In addition, we have published more details on the collapsible sidebar and header and logo changes, including in-depth feature descriptions and analysis and measurement plans.

March 2020: User Research with Readers - phase 1 report
Starting in January 2020 we have been working with Hureo, a user research firm based in India, to perform a user study on how new and casual readers use the desktop interface of Wikipedia. The outcome of the first phase of the study is a report detailing their observations from 24 user interviews. Read more The study was separated in two phases, with the first phase focusing on primarily English readers, and the second phase on bilingual and non-English readers. The goal of the study was to understand the experience of new and casual readers, both in terms of how they feel about the site and how they use the site, focusing in particular on the concepts of trust and welcomeness, as well as on the usability of commonly used features on the site. In addition, we were also interested in uncovering potential areas of improvement in terms of overall and feature-specific usability. We will be using these results to inform future feature development for desktop improvements project.

March 2020: Full results from prototype feedback
In December, 2019 we published a prototype of the first few features of the desktop improvements project for community feedback. We received detailed, thoughtful feedback from over 200 logged-in users, across five languages. We have published a report which highlights the main points raised, both positive and negative, and our plans going forward in response to this feedback. The prototype presented a collapsible version of the sidebar, a fixed-width layout, and a more prominent location for the language switcher. The feedback was mostly positive, with the majority of users seeing the proposed changes as an improvement over the current design. However there were also some areas of concern. Many of the issues raised were due to bugs in the prototype (particularly with the language switching menu), while others exposed areas for improvement that we will iterate on and/or keep an eye on during development.

February 2020: Update on initial features and overall feature sequence
The setting for turning the improvements on will be within the user preferences list for logged-in users. For test wikis, the improvements will be on by default, but logged-in users will be able to turn them off anytime via their preferences or a button in the sidebar. Please see the Opting in and Release Plan page for more details and mockups. As we will be testing each individual feature prior to building, this list is subject to change based on the feedback we receive.
 * We have began building the opting-in and opting-out structure for the project.
 * We have also published the current list of features considered for the project as well as the sequence we plan on building them in.

February 2020: Feedback Round 1 Summary
We have finished our first round of feedback for the prototype of the first few features of the desktop improvements project: the new header, collapsible sidebar, and improved language switching. So far, the results have been mostly positive, with the majority of users seeing the changes as a significant improvement over the current design. However, we also found a few areas for improvement that we will iterate on and consider during development. Here are a few highlights of the results so far:


 * A majority of the editors who tested the prototype really liked the new location of the language switcher.
 * A few editors raised concerns around internationalization and the ability to switch languages using one click.
 * A majority of the editors liked the collapsibility of the sidebar, especially for readers
 * There were some concerns around the amount of white space introduced with a collapsible sidebar and fixed-width layout
 * We saw many requests for a dark/night mode for the site

We are currently running the second feedback round on English and Polish Wikipedias. If you haven’t had a chance yet, please let us know your thoughts on the prototype page. Once both feedback rounds are completed, we will be publishing a more in-depth report.

January 2020: Language Switching Users Tests
In December we did some usability testing to compare the current placement of the Universal Language Selector (in the sidebar) with the proposed location in the article header. We tested a prototype with 21 users in order to determine if people have an easier time switching languages given the new location of the language switcher. The results of the test confirmed our hypothesis — participants in the test group (new location) were able to switch languages more quickly than participants in the control group (old location). Based on these results we plan on continuing to explore moving the language selector to this location as a part of the desktop improvements project.

December 2019: Prototype testing
Between December 2019 and February 2020, we will be performing tests on a prototype for the first few features of the desktop improvements project. We will be gathering feedback from a variety of test wikis by encouraging editors to participate using a central notice banner. We ran the banners and received feedback from the majority of our test wikis during December 2019. In February 2020, we will continue running the banners on English and Polish Wikipedias. So far, the feedback we have received is mostly positive but we have also identified some areas of our prototype that we will iterate on based on the feedback. We will be publishing the results of the first round of feedback over the next few weeks, and of the second, sometime in February. In the meantime, we encourage you to give us feedback (if you haven't yet) on the prototype page.

October 2019: Technical Research pt 2
We have published the results of our technical research in preparation for beginning the work on the project. In particular, we have focused on gathering more information on the following:


 * The possibility of serving a different version of the site to logged-out users (for opt-in/opt-out and A/B testing purposes)
 * Search and the differences between the current search widgets
 * Language switching and possibilities on improving the language switcher
 * T234907 - A technical RfC on what code-base to start with
 * Changes to EventLogging and how they will impact our work

We reached out to all wikis with a MassMessage, and asked for communities to volunteer to be test wikis for this project.

September 2019: Wikimania research report
During Wikimania 2019, we interviewed editors with the goal of sharing the plans for our upcoming Desktop improvements project, and collecting valuable feedback on a number of preliminary design ideas. Our research consisted of user interviews, a free-form feedback exercise, and a presentation with breakout groups for more focused discussion. We have published a report and a PDF summary (in English) of the feedback we received. Overall, we received positive feedback on the focus areas selected, as well as the individual prototypes for ideas. However, we were also able to identify areas for improvements.

We will be iterating over this feedback over the next few weeks and plan on developing a prototype that we can test with a wider audience across wikis.

In the slideshow below is a sample of 19 of the ideas we tested. For more context, please read the full report and then give us feedback on the talk page!

September 2019: Desktop usage and behavior data analysis
As a part of our research process, we wanted to learn more about the way people currently use the site. In particular, how often they use available functionality such as links in the sidebar, language switching, and search. We have published our results. Overall, usage of sidebar links is low - only about 0.5% of all logged out users and 1.6% of all logged-in desktop users clicked on one of the pages linked in the sidebar. Language switching usage varied, generally based on the size of the wiki, with smaller wikis switching languages more often.

August 2019: Research and brainstorming at Wikimania
Wikimania provided us with the opportunity to speak with experienced members of our communities. Over the five days of the conference we were able to share the plans for the project, and collect valuable feedback on a number of design ideas. Our research consisted of user interviews, a free-form feedback exercise, and a presentation + brainstorming session (you can see the slide-deck we used at the side). We will soon be publishing the summary of the feedback, as well as interview session results.

August 2019: Technical Research
To explore different technical possibilities for the project, the team spent a week hacking on different approaches to a single problem - how to enable the sidebar in the desktop experience to be collapsible. We are hoping to use the results from these experiments to determine the technical architecture for the improvements, as well as the skin we would like to build these improvements within. Here is a list of the experiments themselves:


 * Building a collapsible sidebar using a fork of the vector skin
 * Building the desktop sidebar within the Minerva skin. An exploration in the question: "is there a world where we have the same skin for desktop and mobile?"
 * Building a collapsible sidebar using user styles only