Wikimedia Apps/Team/iOS/Personalized Wikipedia Year in Review

Background

Year-end reports with insights on user's habits and achievements have become standard in many apps. They have the potential to peak user's curiosity to learn more about their own habits, compare themselves to others, and inspire a deeper connection with the platform.

We've seen indications that providing either a collective or personalized wrap up of Wikipedia insights is something that would be received well. The Mobile Apps team has seen social media posts where users share screenshots of their open tabs, or reading histories, to illustrate their wide and varied Wikipedia reading habits. Each year, the communications team posts a blog about the top 10 read articles on English Wikipedia, which garners positive engagement from readers. Volunteers have also developed a personalized prototype of a year in review for editing, and it was received well, and improved at the Hackathon in 2024.

The Apps team plans to explore if a personalized Wikipedia Year in Review feature that displays insights about a user's reading history, editing history, and donation history is engaging for App users, and inspires them to make a donation to the Wikimedia Foundation.

As a part of new engagement experiments the product and tech team also plans to create a Wikipedia Year in Review site that showcases collective insights about the year. The apps team plans to leverage insights from this into a version for app users that do not have any personalized insights.

Why the apps?

The apps have the unique capability to provide personalized insights while respecting privacy, due to the app's ability to store information locally on the user's device. Data including what articles users have read, or saved, is all stored locally on the users device, and reading history can be cleared by the user at any time. We can process this data for display within their Wikipedia Year in Review without sending pageview data to our servers. The Apps teams have created internal prototypes proving out the concept in 2023.

The Mobile Apps provide a natural place to experiment: the app audience is much smaller in scale than Mobile and Desktop Wikipedia, and there have been recent investments in improving the donation experience by adding native ApplePay and GPay, based on community requests. Additionally, the technical nature of the apps affords us the opportunity to run quick experiments and get feedback in a way that is not as disruptive as on Web.

User stories

User stories are simple statements that product teams use to focus on what we're trying to accomplish. These are some that we're thinking about for this feature:

As a Wikipedia reader, I want to be visually struck and leave the experience remembering how cool and useful Wikipedia is —inspired and in awe at the breadth and depth of human knowledge that can happen over the course of a year, and ready to give back with a donation.
As a Wikipedia reader, I want to see a breakdown of my reading habits in the App, so I can share my quirky Wikipedia reading habits with friends on social media.
As an editor on Wikipedia, I want to see insights about my editing contributions to Wikipedia, so I can understand my overall impact this year and share with friends.

How does this work fit into the Wikimedia Foundation's Annual Plan?

Wiki Experiences 3: Consumer experience (Reading & Media)

Under the Wikimedia Foundation's Infrastructure Goal, and within the group of objectives focused on Wiki Experiences, is an objective related to improving the experience of consumers:

Wiki Experiences 3: Consumer experience Objective: A new generation of consumers arrives at Wikipedia to discover a preferred destination for discovering, engaging, and building a lasting connection with encyclopedic content.

Wiki Experiences 3.2 Key Result

Under the consumer experience objective, is one key result focused on integrated donor experiences: Wiki Experiences 3.2 (WE3.2) Key Result: 50% increase in the number of donations via touch points outside of the annual banner and email appeals per platform.

Several Wikimedia Foundation teams are committed to working on projects under the WE3.2 Key Result, you can see all active projects on the Reader and Donor Experiences page.

iOS team hypothesis	Timeline	Phabricator epic
Wiki Experiences 3.2.5 If we create a Wikipedia Year 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.	October 1 - December 31, 2024	T371946

Wikimedia Foundation teams are approaching annual planning more iteratively this year, so rather than committing to larger year-long projects, our first hypothesis is fairly narrow in scope. This should allow us to deliver value in smaller increments throughout the year, while also ensuring we have the flexibility to pivot as we learn. So WE3.2.5 is just a first step. We will evaluate results and decide next steps after seeing results from this initial hypothesis.

Feature Requirements

Share at least 2 personalized insights on App usage or editing for logged-in app users
Share at least 1 insight collective insight for each category: reading trends, editing trends, foundation Impact & Fundraising effectiveness for logged-in and logged-out users
Allow users to share individual slides
Ask satisfaction at the end, and collect text feedback
Present opportunity to donate for countries where we accept donations from
Ask users to opt-in to more robust tracking for a future iteration in the App
Prompt logged-out users to create an account, or log in
Where data comes from should be transparent to the user (link to media.wiki page). It should be clear that reading data is only from a user's App usage, and does not contain reading insights from Web
Edits should be confined to Wikipedia edits, and include those made outside the app
API calls for Editing Data should not cause strain on core APIs
Users should be able to view their Wikipedia in Review multiple times
Allow users to dismiss/clear their Wikipedia in Review
Feature is fully accessible using dynamic type and VoiceOver

Audience

Version 1 of this experiment will go to app readers in Mexico and Italy.
If results from Version 1 are promising, we plan to release a Version 2 to all users of the iOS app.

How will we know we are successful?

Validation

2% of Year in Review viewers donate on iOS as a result of this feature
5% click share on one or more screen
65% of users rate the feature neutral or satisfactory
Users that were shown personalized slides rate the feature Satisfactory at a higher rate (more than 10 percentage points higher) than users who were only shown collective slides.

Guardrails

No more than 2% of feedback includes reports of NSFW, Vandalism or Offensive articles referenced in Year in Review.
Completion rate: 20% of users who launch Year in Review view the last slide

Curiosities

How the average donation amount compare for donations through Year in Review vs Banners?
What % of Year in Review donors were repeat donors vs new donors?
On which slide are users most likely to drop off (close feature using done)?
Did account creations increase as a result of this feature?
Did App installs increase after release of the feature?

Version 1 Designs

Our initial designs for V1 of the feature are below. Please note, the illustrations on these screens are placeholders and will likely be replaced. We hope to continue evolving the feature, and adding slides.

The Year in Review item is added to the profile menu, accessible at the top right of 'Explore' or in the article.
Users will see a teaser for the Year in Review when they open the app
The introduction screen provides even more information about the experience. It contains a ‘Learn more’ link that leads to an FAQ page.
This personalized slide features the amount of articles the user has read.
The collective slide displays Wikipedia’s page views on the iOS app.
The number of times the user has edited Wikipedia.
How many times Wikipedia has been edited per minute.
If the user has donated in the iOS app before, they see this slide.
Users who haven’t donated before see this a variant of this slide with different copy and a call to action (Learn more about our work).
The ‘Learn more about our work’ link leads to MediaWiki page with more information about WMF’s mission and an option to donate.
The satisfaction survey is shown after users tap ‘Finish’ or ‘Done’ on the last slide
A toast confirms that the feedback’s been submitted.
A login prompt to improve the user's experience is shown when they’re not logged in.
A ‘Year in Review’ item is added within Settings.
The feature can be disabled.
Share step 1: The current slide can be shared via the ‘Share’ button at the bottom. It triggers the native share dialog from iOS.
Share step 2: The image that is shared feature’s the current slide’s content, as well as the hashtag and the username (when logged in).
Share step 3: In addition to the image, editable text is pre-populated.

How to follow along

We have created T371946 Wikipedia in Review on iOS App as our Phabricator epic. We encourage your collaboration there or on our Talk Page. There will also be periodic updates to this page as we make progress on the experiment.

How data is used for Year in Review

In preparation for the Year in Review, we added two changes to the App’s local storage. These changes align with the existing privacy policy allowance to use local data storage to "provide you with a customizable experience".

We updated the app’s History tab, so that if users view the same article multiple times, they are recorded multiple times within the app’s local storage. T370216. This will allow us to let users know what their top-read article is. Users can still clear their history at any time.
We added local tracking for donations made in the App. If you make an donation within the iOS App, the app will store your donation amount & status on your device. This can be cleared at any time from settings with “Clear donation history.” No additional personal details or payment information is stored. T376219

Users will see a link within the feature to "Learn more", which will lead to a How your data is used page with information on how the insights are calculated for each slide, and how they can clear their data.

Updates

November 2024 Special Update

The first version of the personalized Wikipedia Year in Review has been released to Beta testers in Italy and Mexico, on Italian, Spanish, and English Wikipedia. Users who have reading history on their device, or logged-in users with editing history are eligible to see their Year in Review. Find out more about how insights are calculated on the How your data is used page.
We value any feedback from those who have been able to try the feature, it will inform our iterations and improvements moving forward.

Video demonstration of Year in Review V1 on the Wikipedia iOS App

Our work for the first version of Year in Review was coordinated on this Epic: T376037.
We began working on iterative improvements for a second version of Year in Review, coordinated on this Epic: T379406

October 2024

We began development on Year in Review, completing data set-up and configuration. Our work can be followed from this Epic: T371946
We updated local storage tracking for this years & future Year in Review features
- Updating the history tab so that it can contain the same article multiple times, so that we can show users their most-read articles T370216
- Added local tracking for Native ApplePay donations, so that we can thank donors who have donated through the app T372343