Dagbani Wikimedians User Group Report On Improving User Experience

Improving User Experience is one of the Movement Strategy initiatives that is to be implemented by the year 2030, this strategy document is prepared by the Dagbani Wikimedians User Group(DWUG). It contains the report of a research work, specifically on Improving User Experience as one of the Wikimedia movement’s strategy initiatives. The research centered on the Dagbani Wikipedia.

Dagbani Wikimedians User Group

Introduction and Background

Introduction

The 2030 vision of becoming the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge by the year 2030 is the main goal of the Strategy Movement. The whole idea about it kick started in 2017 where a strategic direction was developed to support the Wikimedia movement to attain its goal. Between 2018 and 2019 numerous discussions were made amongst members of the movement across the globe, ten recommendations were gotten as a result as the underlying principles for guiding the movement in its mission of attaining this vision. Amongst the recommendations was Improving user experience.

This document seeks to focus on the implementation of the recommendation mentioned earlier as we are currently in the implementation phase of the Movement Strategy at the community level. Improving User Experience is supreme in achieving the vision of the movement considering the experience of members with regards to Wikimedia and its projects. It is these experiences that are going to be used by these members at the community level to contribute to the various Wikimedia projects and this has a great effect on the global contribution to the free knowledge encyclopedia. Improving User Experience is paramount in realizing the vision by 20230.

Improving user experience is a broad recommendation and has emphatically has broad scope, this research focused on the Dagbani Wikimedians Community with the aim of making community members become familiar with the interface of the Dagbani Wikipedia.

The research team of the Dagbani Wikimedian User Group(DWUG) went through this work with an introduction and background to the recommendation in focus , next was a discussion of the scope of the research work. The methodology and choice of methodology are then explained, including how information on the research work was obtained, and the results and suggestions are subsequently analyzed. Following these analyses, conclusions were drawn based on the findings and recommendations were made. Limitations and suggestions for further and related studies in the future concludes this report.

Background

Improving User Experience

User Experience refers to the feeling users experience when using a product, application, system, or service. It is a broad term that can cover anything from how well the user can navigate the product, how easy it is to use, how relevant the content displayed is. User Experience (UX) is the holistic journey users traverse as they use a product. Not only does it include their direct interactions with the product, but also how it fits in with their overall task completion process.

It not far-fetched that user experience with regard to the various Wikis is very crucial to new users and existing users as well, when a user is familiar with the interface of a particular Wiki it's easier for such a user to contribute to the Wiki. This means that the more the experience of a user the more effectively and efficiently he can contribute to the various Wikimedia projects.

Being familiar with the interface of the Dagbani Wikipedia and other Wikis make it easier for volunteers to contribute to such Wikis. It is of great importance that the interface of the various wikis are made user friendly in order for them to contribute massively.

Dagbani Wikimedians User Group(DWUG) and its community members

Dagbani Wikimedians Community members are the volunteers that come together with a common goal to contribute to Wikimedia projects. Over 80% of these membership are predominantly teachers and most of them are new users. Over 90% of its membership are Dagombas.

Dagbani Wikimedians User Group is a user-group dedicated to promoting Wikimedia projects in Mole-Dagbani languages. The Mole-Dagbani languages are a large group of near mutually intelligible dialects spoken across countries in West Africa. The largest of these languages are Mòoré; spoken by more than 5 million people in Burkina Faso, and Dagbani; a lingua franca in the northern half of Ghana spoken by some 3 million people including 2 million indigenous speakers. Among the smaller languages in this family tree is Notre, mainly spoken in Benin.

Research Objectives

Main Objective

The main objective of this research was to find out how familiar users are with the interface of the Dagbani Wikipedia.

Research Questions

1. What is your general thought about the Dagbani Wikipedia interface?
2. What features do you wish should be removed?
3. What feature(s) should be added?

Methodology

A questionnaire was created using google forms. The questionnaire after being created was distributed among 15 respondents at random to collect response from them.

Findings

The questionnaire was distributed among 15 respondents at random and all of them responded to it. The following findings were realized when the questionnaire was responded to.

What is your general thought about the Dagbani Wikipedia interface?

With the question above, 9 of the respondents were of the view that the interface needed more graphics to make it look more attractive whereas 6 were satisfied with the current appearance of the interface.

What feature(s) do you wish should be removed?

All respondents were cool with the current features of the interface.

What feature(s) should be added?

10 of the respondents requested that a button be added so that a click on it leads you to commons to easily add a picture/image to an article. The rest of them requested that adding categories to Dagbani articles should be made easier by adding a button that one can click on and it allows you to type in the category just like in the English Wikipedia.

Recommendations

The following recommendations were made based on our findings:

• The interface of the Dagbani Wikipedia should be made attractive by introducing more beautiful graphics.
• A button should be introduced to link Dagbani Wikipedia to Wikimedia Commons for easy addition of photos to Dagbani Wikipedia articles and also introduced a more simple way of adding categories to Dagbani articles.

Summary and Conclusion

This study was conducted to determine how familiar community members are with the interface of the Dagbani Wikipedia. Questionnaire was the research method used where survey was conducted. The findings indicated that community members needed more graphics to be introduced to make the interface more attractive, it was also found that community members were positive about the current features of the Dagbani Wikipedia and they also requested that adding images to Dagbani Wikipedia articles be made easy by introducing a button, a click of which would you to Wikimedia Commons, same should be done in adding categories to articles in Dagbani. Conducting this research has unearth hidden things about the Dagbani Wikipedia. When the recommendations are implemented contributing to Dagbani Wikipedia will become easier than before.