User stories:

• As a new Wikipedia editor, I want to know that I can add pages to my Watchlist, so that I can monitor changes to pages I care about.
• As a Wikipedia editor, I want to know about notable changes to pages on my Watchlist, so that I know if I need to check out the edit history of my watched pages.

Description
The Watchlist is a core feature that newer editors should know about. It can help them track changes to pages they care about, and stay on top of what's happening on their project. However, in a survey of successful Newcomers, 56% of users with <100 edits either didn't know about the Watchlist or had never visited it. Among users with 100+ edits, 52% used it regularly, while 34% either didn't know about it or never visited it. This indicates that new users generally don't know about the value of the Watchlist, while editors with more edits find it useful and use it often, albeit with a significant usage gap even for users with 100+ edits.

We would like to signpost the Watchlist to users on their Dashboard. This could help encourage editors who have never used it to do so, and for users who do have watched pages, highlight notable changes they may want to be aware of.

This could entail two modes - one for users with zero watched pages, and another for users with watched pages with recent changes.

• Zero watched pages: For these users we should provide a brief explanation of what the Watchlist is and then suggest that they visit it. Rather than integrate more detailed explanations in the Dashboard itself, we could prioritise T294840 and T411863 to improve the state of empty Watchlists when these users land on it.
• Non-zero watched pages: For these users we can excerpt some interesting information from the Watchlist to help them understand if they should visit their Watchlist (or a particular page). For example, we could list the pages edited the most since they were last visited by the user, or highlight specific 'notable' edits (T409059?) to watched pages.

We also need to consider the case where the user has watched pages, but there are no recent changes to them. We could add a message along the lines of "None of your watched pages have been edited recently. Watch more pages to monitor for changes!"

Designs
Figma: https://www.figma.com/design/lxVWtTQVcueArx2kW1xfso/Central-dashboard--Further-explorations?node-id=159-16616&t=dZhRQWH0dVJ0tD9n-1
TBD

Illustrative mockups: