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Wikimedia Foundation/Communications/Audience research/Process

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Audience research: Process

Activities

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Through a set of five Audience Definition Workshops,[1] this project has begun to understand...

  1. Wikimedia Foundation teams’ current perception of their audiences:
    • How they define and segment their audiences;
    • How well they believe current audiences are being served;
  2. Wikimedia Foundation’s current approach to audience development:
    • How teams gather information about their audiences;
    • How teams incorporate information about audiences into their work;
    • Challenges to understanding and serving various audiences;
  3. Gaps in Wikimedia Foundation’s understanding or servicing of audiences that prevent the Foundation from achieving its mission.

This information is helping the cross-functional Audience Development team develop a framework to guide audience research and engagement. This framework will attempt to map audience segments based on factors such as: geography, motivation, behavior, acquisition pathways, barriers to access, workflow, brand awareness, language / reading levels, tools used, communication methods, and how well they are served. Within this framework, we will also identify:

  1. Strong areas of understanding;
  2. Knowledge gaps;
  3. Possible priorities for near-term research and engagement;
  4. Potential lines of inquiry for audience research;
  5. Opportunities and challenges for integrating audience research into Wikimedia’s processes;
    • Recommendations for mitigating challenges in audience research when implementing through processes and resources;

In the near term, this will help the Wikimedia Foundation…

  1. Develop a common language and framework for thinking about and engaging various audiences;
    • Socialize and communicate framework organization-wide;
  2. Determine how best to focus Wikimedia time and resources, alongside community efforts, to conduct audience research;
  3. Guide generative audience research on priority audience segments;
  4. Define processes for audience development within various product teams.

In the medium term, this will help the Wikimedia Foundation...

  1. Apply audience insights to organizational and product strategy and development;
  2. Better integrate audience research and user-centered design approaches in how it develops products;
  3. Develop communications strategies (messaging, media channels, etc) to increase awareness and improve understanding of Wikimedia products; and
  4. Develop partnership strategies to improve reach of and engagement with Wikimedia products

Timeline

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October 2016
Five Audience Definition Workshops (2 cross-functional and one each with Reading, Discovery, & Editing teams)
November 2016
Map of Audience Understanding Today; Create high-level Framework of Audiences & Stakeholders, and supporting tools (i.e., Checklist of Audience & Stakeholder Data, Resources to Build Audience & Stakeholder Understanding)
December 2016
Socialize and iterate on map, framework, and tools
January 2017
Finalize framework for segmentation to inform generative research; Plan for forward work
February 2017
Strategic planning for product generative research

Notes

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  1. These workshops were conducted in the weeks of October 17 and 24, 2016, with three product teams (Discovery, Reading, and Editing) and two cross-functional teams.