The Wikipedia Library/Design improvements

This page provides an overview of The Wikipedia Library team's Q2-3 20/21 project to improve the user experience of certain high-priority workflows on the Library Card platform.

Background
The Library Card platform (https://wikipedialibrary.wmflabs.org/) facilitates access to The Wikipedia Library's holdings provided through partnerships with a wide variety of organisations. The tool currently has three primary user workflows:


 * 1) Accessing content
 * Users make use of EZProxy-based authentication to access content for which they are authorized
 * 1) Applying for authorizations
 * Some content requires users to file an application before gaining authorization. Users need to file applications, track their status, and respond to questions.
 * 1) Coordinating applications
 * Some users are coordinators (including Wikipedia Library staff), who review and take decisions on filed applications.

We have identified accessing content as the highest priority workflow. With more and more of the library's content becoming available through the automatically-authorized Library Bundle, we will prioritize design changes which facilitate direct access to content the user is already authorized for, as eligible editors will be automatically authorized for more than half the library's content. Applying for authorizations is still important to many users, however, so we will keep this in mind as we evaluate potential work. While Coordinating applications is a key component to providing access to all of the library's content, the relevant workflows are only undertaken by less than a dozen users. Those users are provided with specific training and direct support, and most coordination is carried out by members of the Wikipedia Library staff team. As such, we identify it as the lowest priority workflow for improvement.

Caveats: Due to staffing limitations this fiscal year we don't have a dedicated designer on the team. As such we've been reviewing these workflows without design expertise, and timelines may move around as required by designer time we have been able to get.

Current workflows
[Summarise the Accessing content and Applying for authorizations workflows as they currently stand]

Identified areas for improvement
[How we're thinking about improving these workflows]

Updates
Week starting...

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