Community Resources and Partnerships/India Rapid Project/Enhancing Wikimedia Commons Mobile App:Improving Usability, Accessibility, and Engagement for India’s Growing Mobile-First Community - Phase 2
Applicant
[edit]- Main Wikimedia username. (required)
Gopala Krishna A
- Organization
N/A
- If you are a group or organization leader, board member, president, executive director, or staff member at any Wikimedia group, affiliate, or Wikimedia Foundation, you are required to self-identify and present all roles. (required)
N/A
- Describe all relevant roles with the name of the group or organization and description of the role. (required)
N/A
Project
[edit]- 1. Please state the title of your proposal. This will also be the Meta-Wiki page title.
Enhancing Wikimedia Commons Mobile App: Improving Usability, Accessibility, and Engagement for India’s Growing Mobile-First Community - Phase 2
- 2. and 3. Proposed start and end dates for the proposal.
2025-08-11 - 2025-12-10
- 4. Where will this proposal be implemented? (required)
International (more than one country across continents or regions) South Asia (India, Bangladesh, Srilanka), African countries, etc. This project mainly affects mobile-first countries.
- 5. Are your activities part of a Wikimedia movement campaign, project, or event? If so, please select the relevant project or campaign. (required)
Other (please specify) Wikimedia Commons App
- 6. What is the change you are trying to bring? What are the main challenges or problems you are trying to solve? Describe this change or challenges, as well as main approaches to achieve it. (required)
We are working to enhance the usability and functionality of the Wikimedia Commons mobile application, particularly focusing on mobile editing. Our goal is to make the app more accessible and user-friendly, thereby encouraging a broader range of contributors, especially from mobile users in India. The significance of this initiative is evident. India is not only a mobile-first country but a mobile-only country, and improving the mobile editing experience is crucial for engaging a wider audience ([1]). Additionally, photography is booming all around the world, and there are numerous photographers who wish to share their photos freely (User:I.Mahesh/Outreach through Social Media). There are also several documentation initiatives and Wiki Loves projects, such as Wiki Loves Monuments, Wiki Loves Folkore and Wiki Loves Mangaluru, that highlight the growing interest in contributing to Wikimedia Commons. Recently, there has been a surge in photo competitions and events, such as Wiki Loves “X” campaigns and photo walks. South Asian communities, particularly in India, are predominantly mobile-first. Without a seamless mobile app experience, we are missing opportunities to leverage this enthusiasm and grow our users and contributor base. Therefore, enhancing the mobile contribution and usage experience is crucial for encouraging greater participation and enriching the content on Wikimedia Commons.
Building on this, our initial project, "Enhancing Wikimedia Commons Mobile App," successfully identified and addressed critical usability and accessibility issues, confirming the immense potential for mobile contributions. We conducted vital research with CIS-A2K, gathered community feedback, and implemented foundational improvements to the user interface and app stability, which was a major issue for users. We had planned to fix app crashes early and move to feature addition. Since the codebase was complicated, at the moment of writing this proposal we are still fixing memory leaks we are finding in the fixes we are working on.
While these initial steps have added stability to the app by about 30% ([2], [3], [4], [5]) and improved the core experience, we are now positioned to tackle the next set of challenges and unlock greater potential. The problem is no longer just about basic usability; it is about providing the powerful, specialized tools our community needs to scale their contribution efforts. Since we have a better understanding of the codebase, we would be able to provide solutions faster compared to the previous iteration.
Main challenges or problems we are now trying to solve:
[edit]- Unintuitive Upload Process for New Users: The current upload process, while functional, can be intimidating for new contributors. Key areas for improvement include the photo selection experience, the lack of in-app image adjustment settings, and a general need to make the entire contribution flow more intuitive and welcoming to encourage first-time uploads.
- Poor Category Selection Experience: The process of selecting categories during an upload is not user-friendly. New and even experienced users struggle to find and apply relevant categories, which is a critical friction point that often leads to poorly categorized images or abandoned uploads.
- App Reliability and Stability: While Phase 1 improved stability by ~30%, the app's overall reliability is still impacted by underlying issues like memory leaks, which lead to crashes and unpredictable behavior. A significant portion of this next phase must be dedicated to refactoring legacy code, resolving these deep-seated problems, and establishing a reliable and maintainable codebase. This is a prerequisite for successfully building and sustaining the new features planned.
Our approach is to build directly on the foundation of Phase 1([6]) by developing advanced, user-centric features that address these specific, high-impact challenges.
- 7. What are the planned activities? (required) Please provide a list of main activities. You can also add a link to the public page for your project where details about your project can be found. Alternatively, you can upload a timeline document. When the activities include partnerships, include details about your partners and planned partnerships.
1. Redesigning the New User Upload Experience:
[edit]- Activity: Overhaul the upload workflow to make it more intuitive and encouraging for first-time contributors.
- Details: This involves redesigning the photo selection interface to be more user-friendly, integrating basic in-app image adjustment tools (e.g., crop, rotate), and creating a step-by-step, guided upload process that clearly explains each part (titling, descriptions, categorization) to new users.
2. Enhanced Onboarding and Community Testing:
[edit]- Activity: Develop a new user onboarding flow and establish a formal community beta testing program.
- Details: We will introduce a brief, interactive tutorial for first-time users that highlights key features. We will also recruit a dedicated group of 20-25 community members (new, intermediate, and expert) to form a beta testing group. This group will get early access to new features and provide structured feedback through dedicated channels before public release.
3. Documentation and Knowledge Sharing:
[edit]- Activity: Create comprehensive documentation and share our findings.
- Details: We will produce how-to guide and update on-wiki help pages for the new features. We will also publish a final report on Meta-Wiki, detailing our development process, the impact of the new features, and our learnings to benefit other technical projects in the movement.
4. Codebase Refactoring and Stability Enhancement:
[edit]- Activity: Dedicate a significant portion of this phase to resolving deep-seated technical issues to create a reliable and maintainable application.
- Details: We will work with our developer to:
- Refactor Legacy Code: Systematically overhaul outdated and complex sections of the codebase to improve performance and make future development easier.
- Fix Memory Leaks: Conduct a thorough analysis to identify and resolve memory leaks that cause app crashes and unpredictable behaviour.
- Establish a Solid Foundation: Improve the overall architecture of the app to ensure it is stable and robust. This foundational work is a prerequisite for successfully building and sustaining any new features.
- Refactor Legacy Code: Systematically overhaul outdated and complex sections of the codebase to improve performance and make future development easier.
- Fix Memory Leaks: Conduct a thorough analysis to identify and resolve memory leaks that cause app crashes and unpredictable behaviour.
Partnerships:
[edit]Our project will leverage key collaborations to ensure its success:
[edit]- IIITH-OKI (Open Knowledge Initiative): We will continue our successful collaboration for community engagement. They will be instrumental in our community testing efforts by helping us recruit beta testers from diverse user groups and facilitating structured feedback sessions.
- Wikimedia Foundation & Mentorship: This collaboration is a key requirement. Building on our learnings from Phase 1, we recognized the need for mentorship. We are currently being advised by Nicolas, who will continue in this role. We will also connect with the relevant Wikimedia Foundation technical teams/respective team for guidance on app analytics and best practices, ensuring our work aligns with the broader movement's technical strategy.
- Indian Wikimedia Community & User Groups: We will work closely with various user groups and experienced community members in India. They will be crucial for piloting the redesigned upload experience and providing real-world feedback on the improved category selection tools.
- 8. Describe your team. Please provide their roles, Wikimedia Usernames and other details. (required) Include more details of the team, including their roles, usernames, Wikimedia group, and whether they are salaried, volunteers, consultants/contractors, etc.
Our core team will continue from the previous project, ensuring continuity and leveraging the experience gained.
- Project Lead (Gopala Krishna A): Responsible for overall project management, community liaison, and reporting. (Volunteer)
- Lead Developer (Dev Jadia ([7])): A contractor responsible for the technical implementation of the new features. We will re-engage the developer from Phase 1.
- Nivas (from IIITH-OKI): Will provide support and act as a key liaison with the wider Indian Wikimedia community, leveraging his connections to support community outreach and testing. (Partner support)
- 9. Who are the target participants and from which community? How will you engage participants before and during the activities? How will you follow up with participants after the activities? (required)
- New and Existing Contributors from the Wikimedia Commons community, particularly in India and South Asia, who will benefit from the improved stability and a more intuitive upload process.
- New Mobile-First Users who have an interest in photography but are not yet Wikimedia contributors. The improved onboarding and simplified upload flow are designed to engage and retain them.
We will engage these participants through on-wiki announcements, direct outreach to user groups, and by promoting the beta testing program. After the project, we will follow up with surveys to measure the impact of the new features on their contribution habits.
- 9.1. If your project includes in-person activities, are there any international participants travelling to India for them? (required)
- No
- 9.1.1. List all countries of participation. (required)
- 9.2. Will the project be transferring funds to any international participants? (required)
- No
- 9.2.1. List all international participants receiving funding and their countries. (required)
N/A
- 10. Does your project involve work with children or youth? (required)
- No
- 10.1. Please provide a link to your Youth Safety Policy. (required) If the proposal indicates direct contact with children or youth, you are required to outline compliance with international and local laws for working with children and youth, and provide a youth safety policy aligned with these laws. Read more here.
N/A
- 11. How did you discuss the idea of your project with your community members and/or any relevant groups? Please describe steps taken and provide links to any on-wiki community discussion(s) about the proposal. (required) You need to inform the community and/or group, discuss the project with them, and involve them in planning this proposal. You also need to align the activities with other projects happening in the planned area of implementation to ensure collaboration within the community.
This proposal is a direct result of extensive community discussions and feedback. The need for reliability improvements and the new features planned in Phase 2 have been consistently highlighted by the community. These improvements have been requested multiple times in the project's GitHub repository ([8]) and have been a recurring topic in our conversations with community members. While there have been attempts by volunteers to address these issues, the tasks have remained incomplete and are still pending. This grant will provide the dedicated resources needed to finally implement these critical, long-awaited features.
- 12. Does your proposal aim to work to bridge any of the content knowledge gaps (Knowledge Inequity)? Select one option that most apply to your work. (required)
Other Important Topics (topics considered to be of impact or important in the specific context)
- 13. Does your proposal include any of these areas or thematic focus? Select one option that most applies to your work. (required)
Other
- 14. Will your work focus on involving participants from any underrepresented communities? Select one option that most apply to your work. (required)
Digital Access
- 15. In what ways do you think your proposal most contributes to the Movement Strategy 2030 recommendations. Select one that most applies. (required)
Improve User Experience
Metrics
[edit]- 17. What do you hope to learn from your work in this project or proposal? (required)
- On User Experience & Onboarding: How significantly does a redesigned upload flow, including an improved category tool and a new onboarding tutorial, increase the conversion and retention rates for first-time contributors?
- On Contribution Quality: Does a more intuitive contribution process lead to a measurable improvement in the quality of metadata (e.g., more accurate categories, better descriptions) for images uploaded via the app?
- On Product Management: What are the most effective strategies for balancing deep technical debt remediation with the delivery of new, community-requested features in a volunteer-supported project?
- On Technical Improvement: To what degree does targeted refactoring of legacy code and fixing memory leaks improve core stability metrics like crash rates and user-reported issues?
- 18. What are your Wikimedia project targets in numbers (metrics)? (required)
| Other Metrics | Target | Optional description |
|---|---|---|
| Number of participants | 50 | |
| Number of editors | 100 | |
| Number of organizers | 3 |
| Wikimedia project | Number of content created or improved |
|---|---|
| Wikipedia | |
| Wikimedia Commons | 100 |
| Wikidata | |
| Wiktionary | |
| Wikisource | |
| Wikimedia Incubator | |
| Translatewiki | |
| MediaWiki | |
| Wikiquote | |
| Wikivoyage | |
| Wikibooks | |
| Wikiversity | |
| Wikinews | |
| Wikispecies | |
| Wikifunctions or Abstract Wikipedia |
- Optional description for content contributions.
N/A
- 19. Do you have any other project targets in numbers (metrics)? (optional)
No
| Main Open Metrics | Description | Target |
|---|---|---|
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
- 20. What tools would you use to measure each metrics? Please refer to the guide for a list of tools. You can also write that you are not sure and need support. (required)
- App Performance & Analytics:
- We will use app analytics dashboards to track core stability metrics, specifically the reduction in crash rates and "Application Not Responding" (ANR) errors.
- We will analyze user funnels to measure the conversion rate of the redesigned upload process and the adoption rate of new features by tracking active users.
- On-Wiki Analysis:
- We will use on-wiki tracking categories and the Hashtag tool to count the total number of contributions.
- We will also perform a qualitative analysis of a sample of uploads from these categories to assess the quality of metadata (e.g., appropriateness of categories, completeness of descriptions) before and after the improvements are launched.
- Community Feedback:
- We will conduct pre- and post-project surveys with our beta testing group and the wider community. These surveys will gauge perceived improvements in app reliability, ease of use of the upload and categorization process, and overall satisfaction.
- We will track and analyze qualitative feedback from GitHub, on-wiki talk pages, and community forums to gather user-reported issues and suggestions.
Budget
[edit]- 21. Please upload your budget for this proposal or indicate the link to it. (required)
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lMMIAlo7ves1-BpLtTKPYcbScg3GGVVaf5yL6b60Cms/edit?usp=sharing
- 22. What is the amount you are requesting for this proposal? Please provide the amount in Indian Rupees. (required)
423000 INR
- 22.1. Convert the amount requested into USD using the Oanda converter. This is done to help you assess the USD equivalent of the requested amount. Your request should be between 500 - 5,000 USD. (required)
4937.82 USD
- By submitting this proposal request you agree with the Institutional Partner Privacy Policy, Application Privacy Statements, WMF Friendly Space Policy and Universal Code of Conduct.
Yes
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