Wikimedia Apps/Team/iOS/Navigation Refresh/Updates

Overview

Updates

August 2024

• Results from usability testing T351834: Two variants were tested with qualitative user testing on userlytics using Figma prototypes. In all, we had 98 total participants in user testing, yielding 86 usable tests.
  • Our research goals were:
    • Update app navigation to improve feature discoverability.
      • Placement: Can the participants find the existing features in the app?
      • Do participants understand what could be found in each tab bar destination?
      • Would participants know where to find new features/content?
    • Evaluate app usability
      • Navigation and orientation: Can participants navigate to and from different areas of the app?
      • Can they navigate between article view and the main view?
      • Activity: Do experienced contributors have easy access to editing related pages and features? Do readers have easy access to reading related pages and features?
    • iOS specific expectations
      • User interface: Does the UI fit with the iOS experience?
  • Our testing audience included:
    • Those with a range of editing experience:
      • Readers
      • Newcomers
      • Experienced editors
    • Users who spoke the following languages:
      • English
      • Arabic
      • German
      • Chinese (Simplified).
      • From countries: Austria, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Egypt, France, Germany, Guatemala, India, Iraq, KSA, Malaysia, Oman, Pakistan, Singapore, South Africa, UAE, United Kingdom, United States
    • A wide range of age and gender identify:
      • Identify as female: 31, Identify as male: 67
      • Age: 19-57
  • App Navigation Variants tested:
  • Variant A

Variant A

• Variant B

Variant B

• • Both variants introduced the following changes:
    • Places being less prominent (no longer it’s own tab)
      • When asked to find it people were able to in both variants
    • History being less prominent (no longer it’s own tab)
      • When asked to find it people were able to in both variants
    • A tab for tabbed article browsing
    • Inverted relationship between Settings and Profile
  • The variants differed in the following ways:

Variant A	Variant B
Notifications in the header of every view	Notifications as a tab
Watchlist located within Notifications	Watchlist located within the Activity tab
Profile as a tab	Profile in the header of the Home view
Saved articles as a tab	Saved articles within the Activity tab

• • Variant B also introduced the concept of Activity, which is a tab that houses: Reading lists, Saved articles, Watchlist, Suggested edits, and Reading history
  • Results
    • Places being less prominent (no longer it’s own tab)
      • When asked to find it people were able to in both variants
    • History being less prominent (no longer it’s own tab)
      • When asked to find it people were able to in both variants
    • Watchlist located within Notifications vs. in the Activity tab
      • All 8 participants had difficulty finding it within Notifications
    • Profile as a tab vs. in the header of Home
      • When asked to find it people were able to in both variants
    • Saved articles as a tab vs. in the Activity tab
      • 5/10 participants had difficulty finding it in the Activity tab
      • 7/9 participants had an easy time finding it as a tab
  • Next steps:
    • We combined insights from both versions into the wireframes shared above. We will plan to make the changes in phases throughout the next year.
    • Additional testing could be done to better understand how each proposed change performs against each specific concern/goal as we add them.