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Submissions/Make your user experience easy to learn: a guided tour

From Wikimania 2013 • Hong Kong

This is an accepted submission for Wikimania 2013.

Presentation Media


Submission no.
5058
Subject no.
T5
Title of the submission
Make your user experience easy to learn: a guided tour
Type of submission
presentation
Author of the submission
Matthew Flaschen and the E3 team
Country of origin
United States
Affiliation
Wikimedia Foundation
E-mail address
mflaschen@wikimedia.org
Username
Superm401
Personal homepage or blog
Abstract
Slides for the presentation

GuidedTour is a new extension that makes it easy to develop guided tours. Leveraging a customized version of the Guiders.js library, GuidedTour allows guiding any process on a wiki. On each step a tooltip displays, either pointing to a key page element or providing background information. I'll explain how we've already successfully used GuidedTour to assist new editors on the English Wikipedia, and give a sneak preview of plans from both the Editor Engangement Experiments team and community. Finally, I'll show how developers can use tours for their own extensions, and wikis can help users learn their processes.

Detailed proposal
Screenshot of ExtensionGuidedTour showing a guider pointing to the edit button

GuidedTour is a new extension, developed by the Editor Engagement Experiments (E3) team, that makes it easy to develop guided tours. GuidedTour allows annotating any step-by-step process on a wiki. On each step, a tooltip, known as a guider, displays. Guiders provide relevant information and can point to a key part of the page. The tour can automatically progress to the next step based on the user's progress.

GuidedTour is now enabled on 17 wikis, with internationalization. It also automatically positions guiders correctly on right-to-left wikis without any extra configuration.

I will explain how we have already successfully used GuidedTour to assist new editors. On the English Wikipedia, new editors were immediately shown a page, called GettingStarted, suggesting several tasks. In some cases, these tasks included a simple tour, showing them how to make their first edit on a suggested page. This resulted in a measurable increase in successful edits.

E3 has more plans for using tours to support active editing, especially by new users, some of which I will discuss. I will briefly describe some of the community tour ideas I am aware of. These include The Wikipedia Adventure, a text-based instructional game by Jacob Orlowitz.

I will explain how other developers can use tours for their own extensions, with full internationalization support. Experienced editors can help new users learn their own wikis' processes, from making their first contribution to uploading an image.

Finally, I will discuss some of our plans for enhancing GuidedTour, and how these relate to Gadgets 2.0. I will make myself available after the presentation to assist people interested in making tours.

GuidedTour leverages a customized version of the Guiders.js library, developed by Jeff Pickhardt of Optimizely. In addition to providing MediaWiki-specific features, we have made enhancements to the core library and are working to share those with the upstream community.

Track
  • Technology and Infrastructure
Length of presentation/talk
25 Minutes
Language of presentation/talk
English
Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted?
Yes
Slides or further information (optional)
Special requests


Interested attendees

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  1. JuhaV (talk) 12:37, 18 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Interested in setting up guided tours for WikiProjects. Daniel Mietchen (talk) 23:07, 22 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  3. CT Cooper · talk 00:02, 29 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  4. DarTar (talk) 21:37, 29 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 00:32, 30 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Steven (WMF) (talk) 03:57, 30 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Trizek (talk) 10:03, 30 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  8. The wub (talk) 14:32, 30 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  9. Ocaasi (talk) 14:34, 30 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  10. Sbouterse (talk) 17:15, 30 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  11. Micru (talk) 04:00, 4 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  12. Waldir (talk) 14:18, 14 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  13. Ovedc (talk) 09:13, 28 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
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