Research:Reading and Editing in the iOS Wikipedia App
The iOS app team requested research to better understand how Wikipedia app users from English and Japanese Wikipedias engage with reading and editing, to guide future feature developments.
This study engaged new account holders who signed up for accounts in the app to understand their motivations for creating an account, as well as long-time account holders who are also more experienced editors and have experience reading and editing on different platforms.
Interviews with en.wiki users focused on both the reading and editing experience in the app. Due to a pivot in the iOS team’s direction away from editing, interviews with ja.wiki users generally focused on the app reading experience, including reading behavior, content discovery, and user perceptions of reading-related features.
Research Goals
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- Explore the experiences of iOS app users in the app, including iOS newcomers, constructive activators*, experienced editors, and readers.
- Identify barriers to editing or constructive activation on iOS and develop actionable recommendations to improve user experiences and increase engagement.
- Explore the reading and discovery experiences of iOS app users and develop actionable recommendations to improve user experiences and increase engagement.
- Compare the experiences of English Wikipedia (en.wiki) and Japanese Wikipedia (ja.wiki) users, highlighting any unique patterns or insights.
(*)Constructive activators are users who create Wikimedia accounts and make their first edit shortly afterwards.
Methods
[edit]Our approach was a series of remote semi-structured interviews, including task observation, with iOS app users and varying levels of editing experience. We conducted 9 interviews in English with en.wiki users and 5 interviews in Japanese with ja.wiki users. Interviews with Japanese Wiki users were conducted by our research partner, Project Kobo, K.K.
Privacy Policy
[edit]All research participants receive a copy of the study's privacy statement, detailing what data is collected and in what ways the data will be used. Any research participant quotes or close paraphrases will be anonymized by default. Participants who have been contacted for this study may, at any point, choose to opt-out of the study.
Key Findings
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- App users really like the app, especially how it displays a history of their interactions, with or without an account.
- Even among the app’s “power users,” motivations and methods of use differ widely—some people mainly use it to search, others use it to “escape doom scrolling,” others use it to jump down rabbit holes, and others use it for personal or professional learning.
- They app’s power users also miss a lot of its features and functionality- many completely missed the table of contents, for example.
- Editing in the app requires users to have memorized or otherwise internalized elements of Wikitext—this is a major barrier to most editing tasks.
See the full report.