Overview
Goal
Update app navigation so that articles are more of a primary destination; along with improving the experience when navigating and taking action within articles.
User stories
1. Pertains to app navigation
a. When moving through the Wikipedia app, I want a more fluid, connected experience, so that I can easily move between in-depth reading and high level exploration without feeling stuck in a dead-end.
b. When reading articles, I want to to be able to move back to other sections without closing the article completely, so that I can return to reading easily from anywhere in the app.
2. Pertains to article navigation and reading experience
a. When reading longer articles in-depth, I want to be able to move within different parts of the article easily and feel immersed in in seeing as much content as possible on screen so that I feel more immersed in reading.
b. When reading articles, I want common actions to be accessible but not taking up too much screen real estate, so that I can easily access actions (open ToC, add to list, find text in page, share) whilst content is still most prominent.
Rationale (Why are we doing this?)
- Re-focus article reading as an equal primary experience for in-depth readers. The article tab stack separates reading articles as a ‘modal’ activity, which relegates it a secondary function to the detriment of a significant number of users who come to Wikipedia for in-depth reading [1].
- Improve the disjointed experience between article reading and the rest of the app for existing users. The hypothesis of the current design [2] to a bottom navigation was that it would encourage users to engage more with the other features of the app. However, as a result there is increase friction between article reading vs browsing. There has also been some negative feedback expressed by users both indirectly (large minority of users who Customize the feed by removing all feed items), and directly (via a smattering of OTRS and store reviews).
- Better surface benefits of reading in the app. Refreshing the article reading experience is an opportunity to promote benefits like black/dark mode, display settings, quick ToC and link previews to mobile web readers.
What don’t we want to do?
- We don’t want the article reading experience to be elevated at the cost of hiding Explore, Nearby or other features
- Updating other parts of the app (Explore feed, Nearby, History, etc) is not the focus of this project, changes may only occur insofar as how navigation to and from these parts of the app occurs
Core tasks
The following may be broken up into further sub-tasks.
- Feature/UI development:
- Measurement and Testing:
- Documentation & Marketing
Links
[0] Design brief (extended version of task description): https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1e9c5r2roklpKjuPr5ExrAd_p1WOLTVHVpOtNE6kEuzY/edit?pli=1#slide=id.p
[1] https://blog.wikimedia.org/2018/03/15/why-the-world-reads-wikipedia/
[2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Apps/Android/Navigation