Wikimedia Research/Design Research

Design Research at the Wikimedia Foundation, also known as Design Strategy, seeks to understand the needs, motivations, goals and challenges of people who consume and/or contribute to free knowledge. We employ a variety of research methods to understand how individuals in diverse contexts use our products and other technologies to interact with Wikimedia projects. Our research informs the design of products, programs, and strategies that serve our users and enhance their experience on our platforms. We collaborate with product teams, designers, engineers, data analysts, global research partners, users, and Wikimedia communities around the world to ensure rigor and reliability in our work. Our goal is to support the creation of meaningful positive experiences for the millions of readers and contributors who use Wikipedia and its sister projects every day.

WMF Design Research

WMF Design Research Barnstar

Email

desresadmin@wikimedia.org

Website

design.wikimedia.org/strategy

Overview

Design research is used to learn about the needs, motivations, and contexts of people we design and build for. It is used to iterate design and technological solutions to be intuitive, useful, usable, and fit within (and not break) users' workflows. In order to do this work, we perform both evaluative and generative design research using qualitative and quantitative methodologies. There is not a clear distinction between evaluative and generative research, so we often do both in projects.

Generative research (for example: Contextual inquiry, unstructured interviews) provides a better understanding of needs, goals, challenges, constraints, contexts, and motivations of people who want to or do access and potentially contribute to free knowledge. are generated from this work are more likely to succeed because they are informed and created from understanding the people (and their technology) who will use them, their needs, contexts, constraints, etc. Generative research is many times done at the beginning of a product development cycle, to inform the project's direction.

Evaluative research (for example: usability testing, concept testing) is an important set of methods the team employs to evaluate concepts, prototypes and current functionality with users. Testing functionality and ideas with the users we are building them for, ensures that functionality is usable and useful for the people they are being designed and built for. Evaluative research is done within product development cycles in close collaboration with product development teams. Evaluative research generally is faster, and requires less participants than generative research.

Our Projects

Visit our Design Strategy website to learn more about our priorities, our projects and how to participate in our research.

Team

• 
  Leila Zia
  Design Research Manager
• 
  Bethany Gerdemann
  Program Manager
• 
  Eli Asikin-Garmager
  Principal Design Researcher
• 
  Michael Raish
  Lead Design Researcher
• 
  Daisy Chen
  Lead Design Researcher
• 
  Claudia Lo
  Senior Design Researcher

Participate in Product Design Research

We are always in need of research participants. Learn more about our research participation program and sign up for our research participant pool.

Design Research Office Hours

Design Researchers, along with other Research Team members, host regular office hours. This is an opportunity for the Wikimedia Community to discuss and receive guidance on how to use design and user research.

What to expect in sessions:

• Each session is 30 minutes long, private, and bookable via the appointment schedules found here.
• While all the researchers can answer questions about research methodologies and scoping, the following depths are available with individual researchers:
  • Bethany: user research at the WMF
  • Claudia: community moderation and Anti-Harassment Tools
  • Daisy: usability, surveys, Product teams
  • Eli: language, usability, contextual inquiry, prototype testing, international research
  • Leila: research requests
  • Mike: language (quantitative/qualitative), survey design, testing, evaluation

When you book, please include a brief description of what you’d like to discuss as well as links to any relevant documents for the discussion.

Appointments are available via the researcher appointment schedules.

Resources

Conducting design research: tools and resources

• A Beginner's Guide to Finding User Needs — free e-book introduction to conducting design research by User:Jan_Dittrich_(WMDE)
• Wikimedia Research/Usability testing — Short FAQ and How-to guide for conducting usability tests
• Research Based Design
• Wikimedia User Personas

Related pages

• Design Strategy Website
• Wikimedia Foundation Research
• Wikimedia Foundation Design
• Index of Research Projects from around Wikimedia
• WMDE Engineering/UserExperience — Wikimedia Deutschland Design Research
• WMF Design Research Commons uploads

[Outdated] Project List