Reading/Multimedia/Media Viewer/Improvements

Screenshot of the Media Viewer's new 'minimal design' - See prototype'

Here is our plan for improvements to Media Viewer, a new feature that aims to provide a better viewing experience on Wikipedia and Wikimedia sites.

Our goals for these improvements are to make Media Viewer easier to use by readers and casual editors, our primary target users for this tool.

To that end, we created a new 'minimal design' including these features:
 * a more prominent button linking to the File: page
 * an easier way to enlarge images
 * image captions right below the image
 * clearer icons for Download and Share
 * an easier way to disable the tool for personal use

These improvements are based on usability testing and community suggestions collected in recent weeks. Based on this feedback, the multimedia team has been prototyping and testing new designs, to be incrementally developed in September and October 2014, after they are validated by user research.

Goals

 * Our primary target users for Media Viewer are readers and casual editors.
 * For these users, we aim to make Media Viewer easier to use and more informative.
 * For power users, we aim to make it easy to disable Media Viewer if they don't want it.
 * For all users, we want to address any critical performance or licensing issues.

As part of this new release, we also aim to clarify the relationship between Media Viewer and the File: description page:
 * Media Viewer offers a quick preview for browsing images, right where you are.
 * The File Page remains the place where you can get (or edit) all the details and file metadata.

For more information, view these slides.

User Benefits
We are developing a new 'minimal design' to deliver key benefits more effectively to our target users: readers and casual editors.

Here are the benefits we aim to offer to these casual users, based on feedback we collected through surveys and talk pages. Features or improvements that can support those benefits are shown in parenthesis. We have prototyped these improvements and are now testing them with target users.

Primary benefits

 * preview larger images (click on thumbnails to view them in Media Viewer)
 * learn about the image (read full caption and/or full description)
 * get more details (go to file page)
 * browse related images (next/previous)
 * enlarge image (see original file)
 * disable Media Viewer (cog icon to opt out)

Secondary benefits

 * share this image (copy the file link)
 * download this file (select size you want)
 * find out who created this file (author, source, license)
 * go back to article page (close Media Viewer)
 * re-enable Media Viewer (cog icon on file page)

Tasks
Here are development tasks we're planning for Media Viewer in September and October 2014, based on what we have learned from our ongoing user research and community consultation.

Released
These improvements have been released:
 * Enlarge images by clicking on them - Released

"Must have"
These improvements are considered critical for this release:
 * "More Details" button - A more prominent link to the File: page - In development
 * "More Details" should include project icon - In development
 * A caption or description right below the image - Ready for development
 * Clearer icons for Download and Share - In development
 * An easier way for any user to individually disable the tool for their personal use - Ready for development
 * Re-enable Media Viewer from a File Page - Ready for development
 * Rename File page button to better label than "Expand view" - Ready for development
 * Make MediaViewer text larger in Monobook - Ready for development
 * Pre-render thumbnails on backend for new uploads - In development
 * Remove metadata panel below the fold - In analysis
 * Support metadata cleanup drive - In analysis

"Should have"
These important improvements will be considered, if time allows -- but may need to be pushed to future releases:
 * Fix 'Licensed under Fair Use' credits
 * Attribution prompt improvement
 * Show file page link if attribution is missing
 * Additional attribution/licensing improvements consistent with metadata cleanup effort.

"Could have"
These improvements are 'nice to have', but are not deemed critical for this release -- they will be considered for future releases:
 * Adjust the ‘Go back’ function for Media Viewer
 * Faster access to file names
 * Additional performance improvements for users on slow connections - needs more investigation.

Metrics
These metrics improvements are also being considered to measure the impact of features in this release -- could be pushed to future releases:
 * Update 'File: Page vs. MMV' performance dashboard with improved user data
 * Performance histogram for MediaViewer and File page
 * Track views and clicks on Share, Download, Embed
 * Investigate better performance metrics solution for Media Viewer
 * Run "versus" test on a dedicated labs instance
 * Collect number of times someone copies share/embed text

Prototype
We have created a rough prototype of our new 'minimal design', to deliver the above benefits and validate the features above with target users. That new design is shown at the top of this page -- and can also be viewed here.

Here is where you can test the new Media Viewer prototype on our 'slow' alpha site:

Demos:
 * Lightbox demo
 * London
 * Berlin

User Test pages:
 * Rapa Nui National Park (test article 1)
 * New York City (test article 2)

(please don't edit either page, as they are being used for our ongoing user research)

Related pages

 * m:Community Engagement (Product)/Media Viewer consultation, project summary and update, with current discussion on its talk page
 * Multimedia/About_Media_Viewer, project rationale