User:Sj/Design chats/Create account

Reminder: This is a wiki! Edit and refactor at will.

Context

1) larger, colorful "create account" button/link
2) not next to "Donate"?
3) clear one-sentence message:
Creating an account lets you keep track of your edits and interact with a wonderful community of editors around the world. Join us!
4) streamlined login page:
No stats about Mediawiki
No "Appearance sidebar"
Just username/password? in a modal?  
 --> followup w/ confirm + captcha

Test designs (on Web)

Text change experiments:

Drop stats in right column
Add text: "Make an account to track your edits and chat with other editors. Join us!"
Ex: "Wikipedia wird von Menschen wie dir geschaffen. Melde dich an zum Mitarbeiten." on german mobile: ok!

Create account button experiments:

Text --> Colored button
"Create account" text --> "Make account", "New account", "Log in"

Create account interface experiments: copy designs from mobile!

Wiki page --> Modal interface
Six-field form --> three field (name, password, repeat)
Captcha inline --> Captcha after submission

Test designs (in Web and Mobile web)

This is already done in mobile -- only shows up after you make your first edit.

Reduce text in popup when editing. (currently narrates that you have a temp account, and can log in. confusing!)
Make temp account and then prompt later to rename / upgrade / assign to existing account
- --> common edit flow would be: close temp account and assign its edits to existing one
- Allow people to log in after the edit
Principle: Reduce the # of popups, banners, and click-through steps. Replace with side annotations that don't interfere with reading/editing flow.
Principle: DELETE WORDS. minimize words in the critical-path interface. Less is more.
- Ex: German mobile web: "Sprache" (6 lines of languages), logo + "Melde dich an zum Mitarbeiten." is 4 lines (and this appeals only to editors), "(Hinweise zur Anlage eines Benutzerkontos und Hilfe zur Namenswahl)" is 1 line, "Es wird empfohlen, ein eindeutiges Passwort zu verwenden, das du auf keiner anderen Website verwendest." (password guidance) is 2 lines, "Es ist eine E-Mail-Adresse erforderlich, um dein Benutzerkonto wiederherzustellen, falls du dein Passwort verlieren solltest." is 2 lines. Save those 15 lines!
- Ex: on Mobile web you only see "login" in sidebar. Try a button instead in the header! Ex: on Android after "log in", "Don't have an account? Join Wikipedia!" is all the way at the bottom, one scroll down, below a weird gray stock photo of ghosts.
Show just "username" and "password" and after the second is filled, show "repeat password" and "email address"
Remove captcha intro (no explanation needed)
Any other text (privacy policy, &c

Working with temp accounts

"Temporary account
An auto-generated account has been created for you by adding a cookie to your browser. To pick a name of your choice and get more features, consider creating an account."

Can't have a userpage? temp userpages are protected to prevent vandalism

Asides on continuous testing

Carve out a % of views, registrations, edits to make available for continuous A/B testing of different messages and experiments. This already happens for new tools or product changes that don't change parts of the interface w/ community oversight [such as string translation]
- 1% of new registrations?
- 1% of logins?
- 0.1% of edits?
- 0.1% of reads?
- 0.1% of sessions?
Have a pipeline of continuous tests being run, w/ a calendar and results

Test process

Test on Mako's wiki?
Test in app?

Test on meta:

Apply Android login style to Meta
Submit patch to Special:CreateAccount (Mako)
Make this accessible as an alt page on Meta only (ask testbed team)
- Is it necessary to change how CreateAccount works to allow A/B testing? Hopefully not; if so, solve this first.
Propose as experiment on Meta Forum
Run small tests of single changes for a few days

design chats