Inuka team
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Inuka (formerly New Readers)
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Introduction
Millions of people for emerging markets inside dey come online for de first time. E be imperative say wanna projects dey support den welcome fresh readers plus access to knowledge wey dey match how dem dey consume content for de internet top.
De Wikimedia Foundation Inuka team, (na e be New Readers product team) dem form am for July 2019 inside wey e be part of de Product department. The team's mission is to foster & build localized innovations to meet the knowledge needs of future audiences in areas of recent digital growth, towards a positive impact on adoption and retention while driving awareness of & engagement with Wikipedia and Wikimedia content for reduction of knowledge gaps.
Why de name Inuka?
Inuka be Kiswahili word wey dey mean "to rise". Wanna team hin mission be say we go raise de relevance of Wikipedia den oda Wikimedia project dema content, for readers for Emerging Markets inside wey no dey access am yet. We choose say we go use name wey comot language wey dem dey speak for part of emerging markets inside, for Africa inside, wey e be way wey go kai we for de audience we dey want reach plus wanna product choices. E be aspirational, den dey kai de team say everytin we dey build or implement, fit dey take we towards de goal of raising worldwide readership.
Mission
- Foster & build localized innovations to meet the knowledge needs of future audiences in areas of recent digital growth, towards a positive impact on adoption and retention while driving awareness of & engagement with Wikipedia and Wikimedia content for reduction of knowledge gaps.
When writing the above mission statement, we considered three areas;
- Why do we exist
- Millions of people in areas of recent digital growth are coming online for the first time. Newer platforms are growing exponentially, and the internet is becoming more multi-modal, interactive and social. These changes challenge both our contribution and consumption models. The need to adapt to these opportunities has risen due to the changing expectations of our users about digital products.
- The urgency of meeting the demands requires the team to develop local innovations to meet the specific needs of future audiences. It is imperative that our projects support and welcome new readers (and contributors) with access to knowledge that matches how they interact with content on the internet.
- Who do we serve
- Sharing the sum of all knowledge will not happen until everyone has access to all knowledge equally. Knowledge on Wikimedia sites does not reach all audiences. While some audiences have firmly established their place as content consumers and creators, other groups who have had a late start in digital adoption are finding their space in the Wikimedia movement in ways that match their state of digital reality.
- To make meaningful efforts through focused initiatives, we need to identify audiences and groups who can be engaged in ways that best serve their immediate needs for knowledge equity, within the scope of technology and resources currently supported through the Wikimedia Foundation. This will pave the way for consistent engagement into wider groups, through extended capacity, evolving technology, and programmatic support.
- What value do we bring to the movement
- Wikimedia projects are essential in the infrastructure of knowledge sharing on the internet. However, our share of media interaction and consumption is still growing as more people come online. It is essential to find opportunities that can match/exceed the quality of experience that users are being offered that can have a position impact on adoption and retention indicators. The simplest way to do that is to re-use and refine popular platforms' patterns, methods and mental models
Team Principles
Below, be sum of wanna team principles, de tym wey we dey design den build products give people for Emerging Markets:
- Explore fresh form factors
- We build for audiences that have the ability to benefit from digital information and services in a format that fits their access patterns.
- We explore new and upcoming formats that diverge from our traditional offering of long-form articles.
- We focus on new knowledge consumers and contributors where we see interactions such as content amplification, preservation, curation etc.
- This can either be on-wiki or off-wiki experiences accessible on different/any devices.
- Emerging audiences and underserved communities centric
- The identity of audiences within areas of recent digital growth, and their unifying elements can largely determine the scope of activities serving their needs. This would ensure that project specific scope, resourcing, implementation, and impact measurement can be handled effectively and appropriately.
- The Inuka team meets users where they are and builds local innovations that are scalable to meet the emerging/growing needs for new audiences.
- Confluence of product, programs, & partnerships
- Projects for emerging audiences and under-served communities will require the creation of last mile connection routes to users, to meet them where they are. Collaborators within the Wikimedia movement i.e. affiliates, usergroups, grantees, and others, will require extended stakeholding to create successful partnerships for these initiatives.
- Strategic collaborations - either through programmatic activity or business partners, and depending on objectives helps us to scale in terms of scope, diversity, and reach.
- Experiment, iterate & learn
- Through experiments, we propose and test hypotheses for audiences contributing and consuming information in experiences and forms that diverge from our traditional offering of a website with articles.
- This entails a lot of learning and iterating in an uncertain and agile environment and being ready to sunset products in the event of failure and providing to the movement recommendations for our learnings.
- Short development cycle
- The urgency of meeting the demands in emerging audiences and underserved communities, require our products to be developed swifty, be nimble, and reach a large number of people quickly. The Inuka team aims to have a fast turn around on experimentation, implementation and product development.
- Multi-lingual
- We build products while keeping in mind compliance with universal standards of internationalization equity, and made ready for immediate or future use in all languages of the world.
Inuka Annual Planning
- 2023-24: The Inuka team's work for next fiscal is guided by the Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan, and specifically Product & Technology department's Objectives and Key Results. The Inuka team builds for audiences that have the ability to benefit from digital information and services in a format that fits their access patterns hence see ways for the Inuka team to contribute to Future Audiences bucket. We expect to split our time between committed work and hypothesis testing for the potential proposed annual priorities.
- 2022-23: The Inuka team's work was guided by the Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan on advancing knowledge equity and specifically through improving user experience. We split our time between active product development and maintenance of existing products. We continued working on the active development of Wikistories for Wikipedia (and paused on Wikistories for commons) , active maintenance of Wikipedia Preview and passive maintenance of Wikipedia for KaiOS.
- 2019-22: The Inuka team's work was guided by the Wikimedia Foundation Medium Term Plan specifically focussing on Thriving movement and Worldwide readership. All our 4 projects; Wikipedia for KaiOS , Wikipedia Preview , Wikistories for commons and Wikistories for Wikipedia were explored during this time.
Inuka Team Projects
- Wiki-Highlights is a test project to validate or invalidate a hypothesis that if the global youth are offered automated, human-reviewed, visual articles as an alternative reading experience in third-party platforms, then we will increase their awareness and engagement of Wikimedia projects as readers and contributors. Wiki-Highlights continues the concept of creating short, visual and reliable knowledge that was started in the Wikistories project.
- Wikistories e dey make editors create short, visual den reliable knowledge wey comot Wikipedia for quick consumption den dem dey share am easy. E go fit generate content for visual format inside so say dem go capture den distribute encyclopedic knowledge wey be less suitable give long form articles. Dis fresh form of content contribution go take into account de constraints editors for emerging digital communities dey face when dem dey contribute content, den make am easier/more welcoming dem go contribute to knowledge successfully thru mobile phones.
- Wikistories for Commons Visually curated knowledge is an area that needs more exploration in our projects. We see an opportunity around how underrepresented knowledge transcended in diverse ways, the type of knowledge favouring representation as a visual experience. Culture, Art, Heritage, History and Language topics lend itself to this kind of visual representation, as seen in various photo essay campaigns done on Commons. This might be an opportunity to increase underrepresented knowledge in our projects. This project is still on exploration phase.
- Wikipedia Preview dey allow make Wikipedia content be available as contextual information for 3rd party websites top. Wikipedia Preview for partner websites top go allow dema readers gain context while dem dey read dema pages den help people make dem gain contextual knowledge wey comot Wikipedia without necessarily make dem click thru go Wikipedia den mo more for Wikipedia top plus de option make e be available to read more for Wikipedia top. E be similar to page previews nanso give external sites. Dem fi integrate de code for de site inside or if de external site dey use Wordpress then dem fi use de Wordpress plugin.https://wordpress.org/plugins/wikipedia-preview/ Read more; https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Preview
- Wikipedia for KAIOS Wikipedia reading app give smart feature phones. Dem release am for 2 versions inside - 1) give India 2) give rest of de world. Availing Wikipedia content on 4G smart, feature phones, would grow knowledge across many parts of emerging markets, specifically India. Released in two versions, one for India and one for rest of the world. Short video of the app.
Design research
- Wikipedia Preview Plugin research: To better understand the pain points and needs of Wikipedia Preview Site Owners and Readers, we partnered with Hureo Research in September to November, 2023. This project gathered actionable feedback for Inuka to use to guide further improvements on the plugin experience.
- Wikistories Qualitative user research with clickable Wikistories prototypes for Indonesia inside plus contributors wey dey exist gather feedback from Indonesia editor communities for early concepts top den designs give Wikistories, wey dey focus for de experiences for potential Wikistories creators top wey dey comot from de editing community
- Qualitative user research with clickable Wikistories prototypes for Kenya, Nigeria den South Africa inside plus fresh/potential contributors investigate de behavior for content creators den consumers for three African countries inside plus distinct user behaviors den context especially wey dey relate to Wikimedia.
- Qualitative research in India so say dem go understand why den how dis users dey use dis phones. We mo say users choose say dem go purchase dis phones sake of dem be affordable den allow access to apps like smartphones dey do. We sanso mo de challenge dem dey face as dem dey try say dem go read Wikipedia for de native mobile browser inside. Challenges wey dem include be ability to scroll thru content, text size for de screen top, dem dey search give content den lack of awareness wey Wikipedia content be available for multiple languages inside
- Early adopters survey feedback In collaboration with Wikimedia Indonesia organized a series of workshops and trainings for Wikistories. These workshops took place in-person in five Indonesian cities (Yogyakarta, Bandung, Padang, Jakarta, and Denpasar) between July and October of 2022. This survey project gathered structured feedback from Indonesian Wikipedia editors who attended these workshops, all of whom were early creators of Wikistories.
- Early adopters moderated research. In order to more effectively conduct research with the Indonesian community, we worked with FloLab, a Jakarta-based UI consultant to help us with this project. Our aim was to understand the experiences of early Wikistory adopters, both creators and readers, focusing on their motivations and experiences creating and sharing stories. We also wanted to understand what motivated current and potential Wikistories readers and creators to engage with this feature.
Meet the team
Follow wanna work
- Monthly/Quarterly status updates for project pages Wikistories, Wikipedia Preview , Wikipedia for KAIOS top
- phab:project/profile/4301/ - What we dey do currently
- Inuka team/Community Events Reports - community events reports
Make you Get Involved
- The Inuka team builds for audiences that have the ability to benefit from digital information and services in a format that fits their access patterns (see team principles ). We welcome you to collaborate with us and share on our team talk page ideas/features we should consider developing.
Contact us
- Contact us on our team's talk page or the talk pages for our projects!