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From Wikipedia Usability Initiative

Welcome to the Wikipedia Usability Initiative wiki. This wiki serves as a knowledge collective and collaboration space used by both the usability team and the community. The original Usability page is on Meta.

News

Babaco is ready for tasting

The second usability release, Babaco, is now released to all Wikipedia and Wikimedia's sister projects. Navigable outline allows you to jump to the section you want to visit without scrolling and the outlines are updated as you updated the headers. Dialogues for links and tables assist you to find links easily and define the size of tables without dealing with wikisyntax. You can enable these features from your preferences under "Experimental Features" in "Editing" tab in preferences. Let us know what you think. More about Babaco is found on the blog.

Second Usability Study in San Francisco

The second usability study took place in San Francisco on October 14th and 15th. The full report is under development here.

About

The Wikipedia Usability Initiative is realized by a grant from the U.S.-based Stanton Foundation. The goal of this initiative is to measurably increase the usability of Wikipedia for new contributors by improving the underlying software on the basis of user behavioral studies, thereby reducing barriers to public participation. With an initial focus on English Wikipedia, eventually this research and development will be implemented across all languages and possibly to other Wikimedia projects.

Main information

• This project has a limited scope which corresponds to our grant, so please get familiar with this to best contribute.
• If you are new here, you may be assisted by taking a look at our frequently asked questions.
• If you want to learn more about other present and past efforts to improve usability, our links to related sites may be helpful.
• We're collecting a list of resources that may be useful in the field of human-computer-interface design and development.

Work in Progress

Research and Evaluation

• Qualitative Environment Survey being conducted on existing MediaWiki extensions which may provide some benefit to the usability of Wikipedia.
• Quantitative Statistical Survey of English Wikipedia being conducted which focuses on volume of edits, new editors, and other related metrics.
• Usability and Experience Study of new and non editors of English Wikipedia (March, 2009).
• Usability, Experience, and Progress Study (September 2009).
• Statistical Evaluation

Design

• Acai Designs: Phase I of proposed usability improvements.
• Babaco Designs: Phase II of proposed usability improvements.

Development

• Sandbox for testing experimental code and evaluating existing extensions.
• Prototype of proposed usability improvements for various Wikipedia projects.

Getting Involved

• Feedback on the staging of changes seen on our prototype sites is being collected.
• We need Your Opinion on changes that might affect you.