Reading/Web/Desktop Improvements/Features/Language switching/fr

Dans le cadre du Projet d'améliorations bureau, nous introduisons une nouvelle manière de basculer vers une autre version linguistique de Wikipédia. Notre but est de rendre la fonction "changement de langue" plus facile à trouver. Notre objectif secondaire est d'améliorer la compréhension générale des projets Wikimédia en permettant à tout·e internaute de découvrir le grand nombre de langues disponibles dans chaque projet.

Plan de déploiement
Nous travaillerons sur ces changements au dernier trimestre 2020 (octobre-décembre) et espérons pouvoir déployer nos premières versions en janvier 2021. Les mises à jour seront visibles par défaut sur nos wikis primo-adoptants, et accessibles sur les autres wikis pour tous les utilisateurs ou utilisatrices ayant activé le nouvel habillage dans leurs préférences.

Feature description and requirements

 * 1) Language options will be available via a clearly-marked button on the top of the page, in-line with the article title.
 * 2) Selecting the language button will open the list of languages that will contain the suggested languages for each user, as well as a full list of all available languages for that article. The list will also contain entry points to language display settings, and language input settings.
 * 3) The original language list will no longer appear on the sidebar.
 * 4) The new location of the button will require changes to the header of the page, in particular, some changes to the location of page indicators.
 * 5) We will have a non-JavaScript fallback which will display the full list of all languages for users that do not have JS access.

User testing with editors
In December 2019, we published a prototype of the first few features of the desktop improvements project for community feedback. The prototype presented a collapsible version of the sidebar, a max-width constraint on the content, and a more prominent location for the language switcher. We received detailed, thoughtful feedback from over 200 logged-in users, across five languages.

Overall, most users preferred the new location of the language selector - they reported it was easier to find than the previous location. People who used the language selector often reported that it would be faster for them to switch languages. A number of users also reported that the new location is more intuitive as it follows a pattern that other multilingual sites use.

While many people noted that the new position of the language switcher was easier to find, they also expressed concern about having an extra click in order to switch languages, especially for cases where people expect to switch frequently. We are currently considering adding single-click functionality for the most-frequently used languages. The sketch below represents some of our current ideas:

User testing with readers
In January - May, 2020 we worked 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 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 and to identify the main issues new and frequent readers had with the current site.

Both the group of participants reading in regional languages, as well as the group of participants reading in English, were overall unaware that we provide language switching functionality within the page. Most of the readers surveyed would access articles on multiple languages by searching for the article via a search engine.

When interacting with a prototype of the new location of the language switching functionality, both new and casual readers preferred the new location.

More details available in the full report.

Language switching user tests
We performed user testing comparing the current placement of interlanguage links (in the sidebar) with the proposed location in the article header. The goal of these tests was to determine if people can find and use the language switching capability faster than the previous location. The results of the tests confirmed our hypothesis - participants in the test group (new location) we able to find the language switcher quicker 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. More details are available in our full report.

Quantitative testing
We are planning to perform an A/B test to measure the frequency of language switching in the control version (current interface) and the test version (button interface).

Limitations
We have also began explorations of including language variants within the current language selector. Due to technical limitations, we will be continuing with these explorations in the second iteration of the feature.