We successfully completed the roll-out of Phase V for the usability features (the new “Vector” skin and enhanced editing features) to all remaining projects (689 wikis) this past week on September 1st.

Now, we’d like your help in identifying any remaining issues associated with the rollout. We’ve compiled a list of the wikis that were updated (which you can find here). Please help us update this list with any problems you notice.

Things to look out for:
* Is the wiki using Vector instead of “Monobook” skin.
* Are the tabs on the top of the page displayed correctly.
* Does the new edit interface work as expected (e.g., editor loading, dialog boxes working, etc.).
* Is the wiki logo displaying correctly.

If there are serious problems, please post your bug report in Bugzilla (file under “Usability Initiative”) or on our bug report page. We are also available on #wikimedia-dev IRC channel to respond to any questions or feedback.

Thanks for your help!

– Alolita Sharma, Features Engineering Program Manager, Wikimedia Foundation

Hi, I’m Alolita Sharma, and I’ve recently started working at the Wikimedia Foundation to help program-manage usability and feature-related software development.

I wanted to send everyone an update on Phase V of the Usability Initiative Rollout.  This is the final phase of the rollout and we are planning to deploy the usability features (the new “Vector” skin and enhanced editing features) to all remaining projects that have not yet been switched.  The release date has been set for Sep 1, 2010 at 10am PDT / 5pm UTC.

In preparation for the release, we’re doing (among other things) a push to identify and fix critical blockers.  We’re running a Central Notice on all remaining projects asking for your help to facilitate the effort by testing gadgets, extensions, and custom scripts on Vector.  We’d also like to ask readers of this blog to contribute as well.  If you’re working on one of the Phase V projects (that is, if your project is still showing the “Monbook” skin by default), please help us identify blockers by trying the beta and posting bugs either in Bugzilla (file under “Usability Initiative”) or our bug report page.

We’ve also created an Ambassadors mailing list (Wikitech-ambassadors) for anyone interested in helping coordinate or follow-up on release activities.  We will also be available on the newly created #wikimedia-dev IRC channel to respond to any questions or feedback.

To give feedback on the rollout process, please leave a comment here.

– Alolita Sharma, Features Engineering Program Manager, Wikimedia Foundation

We’d like to thank users for all the feedback and comments about the new user interface which was enabled to English Wikipedia on May 13, 2010. The summary of feedback will be published soon.

I’d like to address a few of the points you’ve made here: a lot of you reported that the location of the search field is disorienting and it should be placed back at the left navigation bar. We understand your frustration when something you use every day is moved around and you have to get used to the new location. The decision to move the search from the left navigation bar to the top-right hand corner was made based on the usability study.  Study participants interacted with Wikipedia’s search over the browser’s search a lot more frequently when it was placed in the right-hand corner. We are looking at the volume of search queries to monitor how this change is affecting the overall users, and we will publish the findings in a couple of weeks.

We had a few problems with the behavior of the search system during the first week, which was unfortunate. It went through numerous bug fixes and updates, and it should be stable now. We hope you find the new search interaction intuitive and easy to use. We are still looking for a way to expand the search field without compromising the space for tab navigation interaction, which is crucial user flow for both readers and editors.

Within the two week time period after the new interface was introduced to English Wikipedia, we observed approximately 18,000 users returning to the previous Wikipedia interface, called “monobook”. There are about 137,000 unique users who had some activities in Recent changes including account creation. Roughly 87,000 users either edited, uploaded files, or conducted administrative task during the same period. The opt-out rate is estimated from 13% to 22% depending on whether user creation is included as a user activity. This aligns with the opt-out rate of the beta program, but we hope to continue to incorporate the needs of various user groups, such as readers, casual editors, active editors, and administrators.

The roll-out of the new Wikipedia interface has so far only taken place on the English version of Wikipedia, just one of over 250 distinct Wikipedias in other languages.

As a next step, we are preparing for the interface switch of the following nine languages, Japanese, Spanish, German, French, Russian, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, and Dutch. The translation of the software for those languages is ready, thanks to the volunteer translators of translatewiki.net. We do have quite a bit of translation work to be completed and we want to recruit user experience ambassadors who will help the user experience team to communicate to the language communities effectively and understand the language specific needs and feedbacks. If you are willing to take part this role, please contact us here. We are targeting to make this switch happen in the week of June 7th.

Thanks,

Naoko Komura, Head of User Experience Programs

(Update 2: The search interface was updated on May 20. This update addresses the problems where search query is truncated under some circumstances, and the problem that search suggestion is cut-off. Thank you for your prompt feedback.)

(Update: We have received problem reports and feedback that search queries were truncated sometimes and the search suggestions were hard to read due to the limited width. In order to mitigate the problem, the new search function was disabled and the search field was increased by fifty percent. We also have updated the new search interface which we are currently staging on the prototype. This updates address the reported issues such as truncation of search queries and the problems that search suggestions are cut-off. Prototypes in various languages are also available here. Please try it out and let us know your feedback. Thanks!)

Wikipedia has some new improvements, thanks to the hard work and dedication of over half a million beta testers and volunteers who worked with the Wikimedia User Experience team over the last year!  With a beta testing group of 635,000 people and an 83% user retention rate, we’re proud to introduce you to Wikipedia’s new look and feel.  As of 8:00am UTC today, the new features moved from beta and will be available for everyone to use.  This is the first major initiative the Wikimedia Foundation and its volunteers have ever undertaken for Wikipedia’s interface. And there’s more to come.

It’s been one year since we began the usability initiative, and we’ve rolled out the new interface to Wikinews (English and Serbian), Wikimedia Commons, and now English Wikipedia. That means that hundreds of millions of people around the world will now experience an easier to use, and more importantly, easier to edit Wikipedia.  Our most recent interface launch, on Wikimedia Commons, was a great success with continued adoption by over 91% of Commons contributors. Over the next few weeks, the new interface will cascade to all language Wikipedias.

Here’s what’s new:

• Look and feel: We’ve introduced a new theme we call “Vector” which makes essential functions easier to find.
• Navigation: We’ve improved the navigation for reading and editing pages. Now, the tabs at the top of each page more clearly define whether you’re reading or editing a page. There’s also a collapsible navigation for the left sidebar that hides items that aren’t used often, but allows them to continue to be easily accessible.
  
• Editing improvements: We’ve reorganized the editing toolbar to make it easier to use. Now, formatting pages is simpler and more intuitive. And we’ve introduced a table wizard to make creating tables easier. You’ll also discover a new find and replace feature to simplify page editing.
• Link wizard: An easy-to-use tool allows you to add links to other pages on Wikipedia, or to pages on external sites.
• Search improvements: Search suggestions are now improved to get you to the page you are looking for more quickly.
• Pediapress book creator: Create a printed book by selecting Wikipedia articles and adding them to the Book Creator.  Your articles will be turned into a PDF (or OpenDocument) file so you can easily take Wikipedia wherever you go.
  
• Updated Puzzle globe and wordmark: The well-known Wikipedia globe and wordmark have been enhanced and improved. We’ve introduced Linux Libertine, an open source typeface to help support the creation of hundreds of localized Wikipedia wordmarks, and the internationally-recognized puzzle globe has been recreated in 3D and includes even more languages.  Read more from our recent blog post.
  

We kicked off this effort in April 2009, and immediately went to work to figure out how to make Wikipedia easier to use for everyone.  We started with usability testing among everyday readers with no editing experience, and we learned about the way people interact with Wikipedia and how we could make the experience better.  Using this valuable information, we incrementally released new features to users who opted into our beta testing group.  Over the next several months, we continued to improve the features based on feedback from both our beta testers and from usability studies we conducted.  We’re thankful for the input of thousands of international users and volunteers who gave us feedback on our progress.

Naoko Komura, Head of User Experience Programs

Collapsible navigation for Vector's side bar

Wikimedia Commons now has a new feature, collapsible navigation for the sidebar of the Vector skin. Now you will see an arrow icon next to the title of each section. Each section title can be clicked to hide and show the links within the section. We refer to this hiding and showing action as expanding and collapsing.

The motivation for this feature came from observing users being distracted by and lost within the sidebar while trying to find various links. This solution helps to tuck away less frequently accessed items, without making them entirely inaccessible or fatiguing to access frequently for users who want do make use of them.

Part of our research also included tracking the frequency of clicks on sidebar links to discover which items were used the most. The results of our click-tracking experiment guided our choice to make the first navigation section always visible, the second section initially visible but collapsible, and all other sections after that initially collapsed but expandable. As you expand and collapse each section, your preference is saved on your computer so that it’s remembered between pages and sessions.

Trevor Parscal, Lead Features Engineer

The Vector skin differs in several distinct ways from its predecessor Monobook. One of the most prominent distinctions is the location of search controls, now in the top-right of the screen. User-testing has shown that this change has improved users’ ability to find and access the search controls. But there still remained some obvious areas for improvement. Our work to ensure that projects running on MediaWiki can be accessed from a wide range of devices brought us to conclude that the search controls were too space-consuming, specifically taking up too much horizontal space that is otherwise used for displaying top-level menu items. Meanwhile in several of our user experience studies we found that the search controls are generally confusing to users, specifically they did not understand the distinction between go and search.

Simplified search interface for the Vector skin

To solve these problems, we’ve developed a simplified search interface for Vector. The “Search” and “Go” buttons are gone, but their functionality live on. As you type, search suggestions are offered and accessible via the mouse or keyboard using the up and down arrow keys. “Go” is still the default action, executed by pressing the enter key on the keyboard. To perform a full-text search, users can click on the “containing” option within the search suggestions or press the up arrow key on the keyboard. Also, the new search uses less horizontal screen real-estate, making more room for top-level menu items.

You can experience the new search interface by visiting our prototype site.

Trevor Parscal, Lead Features Engineer

Following-up the announcement by the user experience team on March 25, the default user interface of Wikimedia Commons was switched to the new user interface on April 5th. The feedback from Commons users is found here. The majority of logged-in users of Commons continue using the new user interface, while about 9% of logged-in users switched back to the previous interface. After the switch was made to Commons, Ops team has determined that extra system resources is recommended for precautions as transitioning to the new interface while supporting the existing interface can tax the cache system severely. The new hardware is being installed, and we have a scheduled date for switching the user interface of English Wikipedia.

The default interface switch of English Wikipedia will take place at 5:00am UTC on May 13. The deployment process is expected to last for two to three hours.

Maintainer of user scripts, style customization and gadgets are recommended to review the previous post that describes the impact of these changes on bots, scripts, and gadgets interfacing with Wikimedia projects

We are building a frequently-asked-questions page. Will you help to compile the topics you find missing by posting topic ideas to the discussion page? We want to make sure that we provide answers to anticipated questions.

We plan to conduct wider outreach about the upcoming changes to our global user base in the coming week, which would likely include press outreach, blogging, and developing more public-friendly questions and answers. We’ll share more info soon on the Wikimedia blog.

Thank you for your interest,

Naoko Komura
User Experience Programs

Here’s a quick update on how users of Wikimedia Commons (the image repository for Wikipedia and our other projects) responded to the usability improvements and user interface changes which took place earlier this month on April 5.

The new interface was introduced to anonymous users and users whose skin setting was set to default (MonoBook, the style that’s still visible on Wikipedia) at the time of the switch. About 10,600 users had been logged in sometime between when the switch happened on April 5th and April 14 th, a little over a one week period. We observed about 1,000 users switched back to the previous default skin, MonoBook, which represents about 9% of logged in users for the same time period. These numbers are still preliminary as we need to monitor for at least for a month to compare with the editor activity statistics for Commons.

We are processing the feedback and plan to publish it soon, but here are a few of the most frequently expressed feedback.

Q: Where did the watch/unwatch tab go?

A: The Watch/Unwatch tab is now the tab with the star as seen in the image below. Watch/Unwatch was once in the drop-down menu, but since the early beta feedback indicated that it is frequently used task, it was moved up to the top tab navigation. The star is used to minimize the tab width. For languages such as German and Greek, whose words tend to be long, the screen real-estate for tabs is limited. And using the star is one way to provide an universal solution.

Q: Why don’t my tools and scripts work any more?

A: Although the user experience team had reached out to the script writers and gadget writers in advance through blogs and messages via Village Pump, it takes a while for all scripts to be compatible with the new skin, Vector. We’re working on many of these features now.

Q: MonoBook was working fine for me, why change?
Multiple usability studies revealed that new editors with little or no experience in editing Wikimedia projects have a hard time navigating to get to the article and apply a simple formatting edit. The new usability improvements bring a simplified approach in navigation, the expandable toolbar depending on your edit tasks, built-in help systems, easy-to-find special characters, and wizards to add links and and tables. By making the editing experience easy, the hurdles to join Wikimedia projects will be lowered. By inviting more editors to Wikimedia projects, it will increase the potential quality the articles. Thus our ecosystem gets healthier.

Q: How do I switch back?

A: Follow the “New!” link, and go to “Take me back” section. You can also change your settings under appearance and editing in your user preferences.

Lastly, ArséniureDeGallium created a new Userbox template called “User Vector skin” for users who like Vector. Steven Walling ported it to English Wikipedia. The exact schedule of the switch for English Wikipedia is still to be determined, but it is likely sometime in May. We will send out update as the plan finalizes.

(UPDATE The survey feedback as of April 21 is available here.)

Naoko Komura, Head of User Experience Programs

An update from the user experience team …

Wikimedia Commons, the multimedia repository with over six million assets, has a brand new user interface and navigation today. This is the first roll out of the usability improvements to Wikimedia projects after English Wikinews and Wikimedia Strategic Planning adopted the usability beta as default interface during its early beta phase.

The highlight of improvements are:

• We are changing our default look to a new theme we call “Vector” which makes essential functions easier to find.
• Editing pages will be easier, thanks to a new editing toolbar that makes it simpler to insert links and tables, and a built-in “cheatsheet” to access help for the most commonly used functions.
• All users will also see that the site layout has changed noticeably. We’ve simplified the site navigation, relocated the search box to satisfy user expectations and to follow other web standards, reduced some of the clutter, and made sure that the new features work with different resolutions, browser formats, and window sizings.

(The multimedia user experience team is currently working to simplify the upload process and the new upload process will be available later this year.)

The details of the improvements can be found at our blog post from March 25.

We hope you find the new interface intuitive and easy to navigate.[1] If the new interface does not work out for you and if you prefer to stick to the classic look and feel, follow the “New!” link on the top of the page and go to the “Take me back!” section.

Our next roll-out is English Wikipedia. We are planning to introduce the new interface and navigation design to English Wikipedia towards the end of April.

Thank you for your interest,

Naoko Komura, Project Manager, User Experience

[1] The new toolbar is currently not supported in Internet explorer 8.