Wikimedia Apps/Team/iOS/iOS Annual Plan 2024-2025
 | This page is for Fiscal Year 2024-2025, and is no longer being updated. See the team's page for ongoing work: Wikimedia Apps/Team/iOS. |
The iOS team's work was guided by the Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan, and specifically the Product & Technology department's Objectives and Key Results. The Annual Plan relates to the Wikimedia Foundation's fiscal year, which starts on July 1 and ends on June 30 of the following year.
The iOS team typically expects that about 2/3 of our time will be devoted to annual planning priorities in the coming year, and 1/3 will be spent on technical maintenance and other essential work to support our actively and passively maintained projects.
Essential work
[edit]- Maintained Projects: We continued to support the recently launched "Add an image" suggested edit, as well as the overall iOS app platform that we will need to ensure doesn’t degrade. We fixed bugs raised by app users.
- Temporary Accounts: The iOS team added support for the deployment of Temporary Accounts.
- Navigation Refresh: The iOS app is undergoing a navigation refresh, in order to make room for future editing and browsing features. While part of this work was incorporated into the annual plan, there was also technical debt that needed to be adressed in order to proceed with improving the app's navigation.
Completed Annual Planning Priorities
[edit]Our work in from June 2024 to July 2025 focused fell under 3 parts of the annual plan:
Wiki Experiences 1.2
[edit]Current full-page editing experiences require too much context, patience, and trial and error for many newcomers to contribute constructively. To support a new generation of volunteers, we will increase the number and availability of smaller, structured, and more task-specific editing workflows (E.g. Edit Check and Structured Tasks).
Wiki Experiences 3.1
[edit]There is a new generation of readers looking to build a lasting connection with Wikipedia. As a result we plan to explore opportunities for readers to more easily discover and learn from content they are interested in. The Android app team will release a series of experiments and determine in partnership with the community, which intervention best contributes to reader retention.
Wiki Experiences 3.2
[edit]Our goal is to provide a diversity of revenue sources while recognizing our existing donors. Based on feedback and data, our focus is on increasing the number of donations beyond the methods the Foundation has relied upon in the past, specifically the annual banner appeals. We want to show that by investing in more integrated donor experiences, we can sustain our work and expand our impact by providing an alternative to donors and potential donors that are unresponsive to banner appeals. 50% is an initial estimate based on the decreased visibility of the donate button on Web as a result of Vector 2022, and the increase in the number of donations from FY 2023-2024's pilot project on the Wikipedia apps to enhance donor experiences (50.1% increase in donations). Evaluating this metric by platform will help us understand trends in platforms and if different tactics should be deployed in the future based on a difference in behavior based on platform audience.
| Key Result | iOS team hypothesis | Project details | Timeline |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wiki Experiences, Key Result 3.2
50% increase in the number of donations via touch points outside of the annual banner and email appeals per platform. |
If we create a clickable design prototype that demonstrates the concept of a badge representing donors championing article(s) of interest, we can learn if there would be community acceptance for a production version of this method for fundraising in the Apps. | Fundraising Experiment in the iOS App | Completed September 2024. |
| Wiki Experiences, Key Result 3.2
50% increase in the number of donations via touch points outside of the annual banner and email appeals per platform. |
If we create a Wikipedia in Review experiment in the Wikipedia app, to allow users to see and share personalized data about their reading, editing, and donation habits, we will see 2% of viewers donate on iOS as a result of this feature, 5% click share and, 65% of users rating the feature neutral or satisfactory.
& If we make improvements to the personalised and collective content of the iOS apps’ Year in Review, and scale its availability, we will learn if this is an effective fundraising method. |
Wikimedia Apps/Team/iOS/Personalized Wikipedia Year in Review | Complete |
| Wiki Experiences, Key Result 3.2
50% increase in the number of donations via touch points outside of the annual banner and email appeals per platform. |
If we make the “Donate” button in the iOS App more prominent by making it one click or less away from the main navigation screen, we will learn if discoverability was a barrier to non banner donations. | Wikimedia_Apps/Team/iOS/Navigation_Refresh | Complete |
| Wiki Experiences, Key Result 1.2
Constructive Activation: Widespread deployment of interventions shown to collectively cause a 10% relative increase (y-o-y) on mobile web and a 25% relative increase (y-o-y) on iOS of newcomers who publish ≥1 constructive edit in the main namespace on a mobile device, as measured by controlled experiments. |
If we conduct an A/B/C test with the alt-text suggested edits prototype in the production version of the iOS app we can learn if adding alt-text to images is a task newcomers are successful with and ultimately, decide if it's impactful enough to implement as a suggested edit on the Web and/or in the Apps. | Wikimedia Apps/iOS Suggested edits project/Alt Text Experiment | Deployed September 2024, Complete January 2025 |
| Wiki Experiences, Key Result 3.1
Release two curated, accessible, and community-driven browsing and learning experiences to representative wikis, with the goal of increasing the logged-out reader retention of experience users by 5% |
If we develop and test design prototypes for tabbed browsing in the Wikipedia iOS app, we will gain and incorporate actionable insights on usability, while also enabling engineers to assess technical feasibility of different approaches, building a solid foundation for adding Tabs to the app in Q4.
& If we introduce Tabs into the iOS app to improve the browsing experience, we’ll see a 1% increase in the overall app retention of logged out users for target audiences. |
Wikimedia_Apps/Team/iOS/Tabbed_Browsing_(Tabs) | Completed |
| Wiki Experiences, Key Result 3.2
50% increase in the number of donations via touch points outside of the annual banner and email appeals per platform. |
If we create a Wikipedia in Review experiment in the Wikipedia app, to allow users to see and share personalized data about their reading, editing, and donation habits, we will see 2% of viewers donate on iOS as a result of this feature, 5% click share and, 65% of users rating the feature neutral or satisfactory. | Wikimedia Apps/Team/iOS/Personalized Wikipedia Year in Review | Deployed to initial audiences end of November, Completed January 2025 |
| Wiki Experiences, Key Result 3.1
Release two curated, accessible, and community-driven browsing and learning experiences to representative wikis, with the goal of increasing the logged-out reader retention of experience users by 5% |
If we make the article search bar more prominent, we will increase the number of users who initiate searches by 8%, possibly leading to a 1% increase in search retention rate for logged out users. | Wikimedia Apps/Team/iOS/Navigation Refresh | Completed |
| Wiki Experiences, Key Result 1.2
Constructive Activation: Widespread deployment of interventions shown to collectively cause a 10% relative increase (y-o-y) on mobile web and a 25% relative increase (y-o-y) on iOS of newcomers who publish ≥1 constructive edit in the main namespace on a mobile device, as measured by controlled experiments. |
If we temporarily present a population of new account holders with an invitation to “add an image via Suggested Edits within an Activity tab, we'll learn if this explicit call to action, and corresponding structured workflow, is ≥25% more effective at increasing constructive activation than a generic invitation to "Edit" Wikipedia presented in the same place. | Wikimedia_Apps/iOS_Suggested_edits_project/Activity_Tab_Experiment | Complete |
| Wiki Experiences, Key Result 4.4
Launch temp accounts to 30 wikis. |
If we improve the interface of the iOS app, we will be able to clearly communicate how temporary accounts work to users as they edit without logging in, and the iOS app will be prepared for the imminent release of temporary accounts to all projects. | https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T337523 | Complete |