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[V1 experiment release] Redesign mobile web account creation form following Codex guidelines
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Description

User story & summary:

As a mobile web user, I want a cleaner and less verbose account creation form so that I can view all required fields at a glance without scrolling, and complete registration with reduced information overload.

Summary

Redesign the mobile web account creation form to follow Codex guidelines and reduce visual and cognitive complexity. The updated design shortens explanatory text, improves layout, and allows users to view all required fields on a typical mobile screen without scrolling.

Background & design

See: T415659: [V1 test] Redesign mobile web account creation form following Codex guidelines & T408649: Early design exploration for Account Creation: V1 designs

Experiment Details:
  • WE1.8.3 Measurement Plan
  • Existing baselines:
  • Exposure prediction:
  • Duration of experiment
    • start date: March 23, 2026
    • end date: June 30, 2026
  • Machine readable name: we-1-8-account-creation-form-v1
  • stream/schema:
  • Link to test-kitchen dashboard experiment config:
  • Wikis / groups: enwiki
  • Automated analysis metrics, including link to metric catalog, instrumentation source:
  • Manual analysis metrics:
  • Link to the aftermath task:
Acceptance Criteria:
  • Set up A/B test on Test Kitchen (at least 24 hours prior to release)
  • Release experiment on start date listed above (or communicate if a shift in release is necessary)
Metrics added to the experiment
MetricInstrument source
Experiment exposuresexperiment_exposure
Account Creation attempts (= all Special:CreateAccount submissions)'creation_attempt'
Fraction of Special:CreateAccount submissions with email'creation_attempt_with_email'
Unsuccessful account creation attempts (= Page visits with error present)'page_visit_with_error'
Special:CreateAccount Create-Account-button clickthrough'create account button'
Special:CreateAccount user policy link clickthrough'username policy link'
Unavaialble metrics:

Due to an inherent limitation of how test-kitchen works, we only can instrument the Special:CreateAccount form itself (which lives technically on the auth.wikimedia.org domain) and nothing on the origin wiki, so the following are not possible for this experiment:

Account creation rategeneric account creation instrument
Constructive edit rate (mobile web)edit_saved
Constructive edit rate of newer editors (mobile web)edit_saved

Related Objects

Event Timeline

Michael triaged this task as High priority.Mar 13 2026, 1:46 PM

Change #1251125 had a related patch set uploaded (by Michael Große; author: Michael Große):

[mediawiki/extensions/WikimediaEvents@master] refactor: make edit_save instrumentation more reusable

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1251125

Change #1253456 had a related patch set uploaded (by Michael Große; author: Michael Große):

[mediawiki/extensions/WikimediaEvents@master] createAccount: instrument experiment CTR for button and link

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1253456

Change #1251125 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/WikimediaEvents@master] refactor: make edit_save instrumentation more reusable

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1251125

Change #1253456 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/WikimediaEvents@master] createAccount: Log exposure and CTRs for account creation experiment

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1253456

Change #1255685 had a related patch set uploaded (by Michael Große; author: Michael Große):

[mediawiki/extensions/WikimediaEvents@wmf/1.46.0-wmf.20] createAccount: Log exposure and CTRs for account creation experiment

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1255685

Change #1255685 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/WikimediaEvents@wmf/1.46.0-wmf.20] createAccount: Log exposure and CTRs for account creation experiment

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1255685

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2026-03-19T13:09:50Z] <urbanecm@deploy2002> Started scap sync-world: Backport for [[gerrit:1255686|CreateAccount: Add class to aide in instrumentation]], [[gerrit:1255685|createAccount: Log exposure and CTRs for account creation experiment (T419916)]]

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2026-03-19T13:13:41Z] <urbanecm@deploy2002> migr, urbanecm: Backport for [[gerrit:1255686|CreateAccount: Add class to aide in instrumentation]], [[gerrit:1255685|createAccount: Log exposure and CTRs for account creation experiment (T419916)]] synced to the testservers (see https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mwdebug). Changes can now be verified there.

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2026-03-19T13:22:48Z] <urbanecm@deploy2002> Finished scap sync-world: Backport for [[gerrit:1255686|CreateAccount: Add class to aide in instrumentation]], [[gerrit:1255685|createAccount: Log exposure and CTRs for account creation experiment (T419916)]] (duration: 12m 58s)

Change #1259172 had a related patch set uploaded (by Bvibber; author: Bvibber):

[mediawiki/extensions/WikimediaEvents@master] Don't throw exception when init code runs before testKitchen loads

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1259172

Change #1259172 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/WikimediaEvents@master] Don't throw exception when init code runs before testKitchen loads

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1259172

Change #1266254 had a related patch set uploaded (by Michael Große; author: Michael Große):

[mediawiki/extensions/WikimediaEvents@master] Limit Special:CreateAccount instrumentation to enwiki

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1266254

Change #1266254 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/WikimediaEvents@master] Limit Special:CreateAccount instrumentation to enwiki

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1266254

Michael updated the task description. (Show Details)

Let's move this back to doing. We'll analyze it in GrowthBook after backporting two changes today and restarting the data collection tomorrow.

Change #1270549 had a related patch set uploaded (by Michael Große; author: Michael Große):

[mediawiki/extensions/GrowthExperiments@master] stats(CreateAccount): record baseline data for opening rates

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1270549

Change #1270549 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/GrowthExperiments@master] stats(CreateAccount): record baseline data for opening rates

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1270549

Change #1273900 had a related patch set uploaded (by Michael Große; author: Michael Große):

[mediawiki/extensions/GrowthExperiments@master] stats(CreateAccount): ignore overridden experiments

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1273900

Change #1273900 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/GrowthExperiments@master] stats(CreateAccount): ignore overridden experiments

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1273900