Ideating and researching ideas this week.

• Translations for Apps design experiment
• Contractor check-in about Future Audiences work
• Submitted Calendly and Prolific Coupa requests

@DDeSouza, please update with Des Strat website with the following project
Please also include it on timeline.html

Delivered qualitative research report to the Apps and FA teams. (private link)

Presented survey report to the Apps team on Tuesday, Dec 9th. (private link)

Week of Dec 1:

• Participant recruitment and workflow support for API Sandbox project
• OverLeaf contract tasks

• Gave input/feedback on recruitment and materials for Sarai's developer interview project. Coordinated on the recruitment plan.

Weekly update:

Update for week of Oct 10:

Update for week of Nov 10:

Completed final to-dos to close out this task:

• Write up of Attribution sprint apps/games interview findings
• Follow up tasks on a research community request about recruiting editors
• Lead a discussion on recruitment via surveys with the DR team
• Follow up tasks for recruiting at events

• Mike and I met with the Apps team to get more context on the Explore Feed refresh project and their desired design research outcomes.
• Discussed approaches and constraints with Mike
• Wrote a research brief (private link)
• Sent it to Jazmin and Tais for reactions, with the goal of finalizing survey questions and general approach by early next week

Update for week of Oct 20:

Update from week of Oct 13:

Week of Oct 13: Put together a presentation (private link) summarizing findings from our internal research (team survey, 1:1 conversations, group discussions, and review of projects since 2023) alongside UX industry reports and insights. Delivered the presentation to the team today.

Update for week of Oct 6th:

No update for the week of Oct 6

Presented work to date on this to research team

• Year in Review support: Lots of recruitment, participant management, and study logistics. Many of our recruited participants experienced technical challenges when trying to complete the unmod test. Due to this, we pivoted to moderated tests, which required some extra planning, materials development, and communications with participants. Additionally, we got few screener responses from a couple of key participant segments, requiring extra rounds of recruitment outreach. In the end, we got all of the interviews from all of the segments we needed 🎉, assuming the one remaining interviewee shows up today.
• Monitoring the ongoing ja.wiki participant database recruitment drive and cleaning database records as needed.
• Participant management and recruitment help for for Guided Article/Section Creation
• Provided logistical support and participant management for Watchlist testing
• Translations for iOS/Android A/B tests

Finished my conversations with the Researchers about delays that happened with their recent studies. Found that stakeholder misalignment was the #1 cause of delays, and got specifics on what didn't go smoothly. Looked into the re-ops literature on the topic but couldn't find anything very helpful to our context. 2nd are various recruitment challenges, most of which are related to (a) me being on sabbatical so I wasn't able to advise (b) the multilingual nature of our research- this just takes more time than a monolingual/English study (c)recruiting niche populations. Documented this in our doc and discussed with Debra.

• Big recruitment effort for Year in Review testing: multiple rounds of emails to EN and JA-EN participants in the database. Monitoring screener responses and classifying respondents into 8 groups. Sending clear and detailed instructions for the test to qualified participants. Working closely with Sarah to debug pilot and coordinate on the readiness of each individual test. Being ready to send out instructions as soon as the tests are ready. Receiving and responding to participant issues and inquiries. Contacting Userlytics support on behalf of users experiencing issues.
• Deployed a ja.wiki participant database recruitment message with Daniel to find more JA-EN speakers that can participate in the YiR study. Using the opportunity to recruit 3000 new ja.wiki signups into the database. Monitoring incoming registrations.
• Participant management for for Guided Article/Section Creation
• Built a custom workflow to support the Watchlist Study, provided recruitment advice, worked with Legal to customize release form.
• Prolific and AirTable contracts are set

This week I dug into the literature in the UXR field about average project durations, other benchmarks, common delays, and fixes, and made comparisons to averages with our projects. I added my notes to the doc (private link) I've been working on. I also spoke with 3/4 researchers to hear concrete examples of delays on recent projects. Starting to work on a synthesis of all this information.

• Submitted AirTable contract renewal
• Recruitment strategizing, materials, screener survey for Year in Review testing.
• Participant management for for Guided Article Creation
• Incentives for Wikifunctions testing, Mod Tools testing, Progression, Guided Article Creation
• Followed up with Katie about special recruitment for TSP and organized database around that recruitment effort
• Participant database management
• UserInterviews.com platform demo

I discussed this question with Yu-Ming and Tanja to gather their perspectives on whether we need to unify participant incentive practices for surveys across the team. We reached a consensus that large, representative sample surveys should not be incentivized, both for practical and ethical reasons. However, we agreed that smaller, user-feedback surveys can be incentivized when needed. Incentives are a useful tool for ensuring sufficient responses to asynchronous feedback requests. Surveys are often better suited for a project than an unmoderated test that would be incentivized. Offering incentives for such surveys also enable us to draw on our participant database for respondents—where we’ve promised users who sign up that they will only be contacted for incentivized research opportunities.

• Updated participate.html on the design strategy site; submitted merge request.
• incentives for Edit Check, Progression, and Mod Tools Testing
• Recruitment, translations, and general re-ops for Guided Article/Section Creation project. Tried to query one segment of users myself with some success.
• Submitted contract for Prolific
• Expanded DR project database to include methodologies

This week I collected survey responses from the team and held a discussion about the top bottlenecks. I summarized (private link) the survey results and discussion, and provided some possible solutions to each area that tends to cause bottlenecks.

Update for week of Sep 1-5: Created and distributed an internal team survey (private link) to gather perceptions of where bottlenecks most often occur.

Update for week of Sep 1-5th:

No major updates. Just in the ideation phase this week.

• Mod Tools prototype testing: created recruitment materials and screener survey, sent emails to 400 database participants based on the team's criteria, and monitored responses.
• Wikifunctions testing with Dagbani editors: created recruitment materials, tracking signed release form and scheduled interviews.
• Contract renewal process for AirTable. Spoke with other AT users about their plans and explored what it would entail to move to CiviCRM.
• Took over as brand admin on Qualtrics. Onboarded as the admin and began organizing/updating the account.

Submitted contract renewals for our 3 current contractors and did some followup to make sure the handoff of those requests to Debra goes smoothly
Followup for Qualtrics contract
Developed a recruitment plan and participant management workflow for the Apps Ambassador program
Delivered es.wiki users for recruitment for the Deep Reading project
Delivered finalized messaging, plan, and list of users for TSP specialized recruitment project
Transferred Docusign and incentive tasks to contractors leading Centralized Contribs and Deep Reading
Supported contractors with ad hoc admin/ops needs
Initiated LimeSurvey theme improvements
Updated des strat website with a number of projects
Airtable updates and maintenance: Prog Management base, Research participant database, and Knowledge Repo

@DDeSouza , please add the following projects to the des strat website

@DDeSouza , I don't think this got added

@DDeSouza , please add the following project:

@DDeSouza ,
Please add Debra Kumar, Design Research Manager, to Design Strategy team page, placing her before Bethany.

Submitted BARs for Qualtrics and Tremendous
Submitted contract request for a Spanish speaking UXR to help with Deep Reading
Launched the es.wiki recruitment drive, monitoring
supporting our contractors with their research ops, recruitment, and workflows
created workflow and messaging for special TSP recruiting

Ended the en.wiki participant recruitment drive after 5255 sign ups.
Continued onboarding Debra to re-ops and team processes
SurveyMonkey evaluation and recommendation [private link]
Coordinated mod testing training with Userlytics for Design team
Wrote an RFP for an external research partner for Deep Reading
Supported with recruitment and various re-ops: Deep Reading, Wikifunctions Dagbani testing, Central Contribs for Mods
Presented continuity plan to DR team

Monitoring en.wiki participant recruitment drive and working on the updates/maintenance to the database
Onboarding Debra to the research ops and team processes
SurveyMonkey exploration and coordination with Tanja and Mike
Continuity planning for my sabbatical; creating instructions and documentation
Supported Deep Readers project with recruitment strategy, messaging, planning, and more.
Supported Jahnavi's project with materials and translation.
Translations for Apps experiment
Conversation about specialized recruitment with Katie; started creating plan and materials.

Deployed a recruitment quicksurvey on en.wiki; monitored incoming responses
Onboarding Debra to the research ops and team processes
Created a flyer and prepared for an in-person recruitment drive at the Hackathon
Continued working with Bárbara on updating Des Strat website images
Heard back from SurveyMonkey and did some followup, arranged for Tanja and/or Mike to get access to test the platform via FT team
Translations for two teams

Discussed the Deep Readers project with Tara and developed a strategy for recruitment.
Working on a recruitment strategy and program for Apps Ambassadors with Amal
Preparing for quick survey recruitment drive for the participant database.
DR budget planning for the next FY
Followed up with SurveyMonkey- many on their team are OOO for Easter break so things are moving slowly.
Progress on updating user interview processes to include minors, working with Legal and Human Rights groups.

Please add to the sentiment-perception initiative and on the timeline:

I presented this research on April 16th, 2025. [private link]
Commons File here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Reading_and_Editing_on_the_iOS_App_-_Apr2025.pdf

Presented a summary of conversations and my next steps at the April 15 D-DR team meetup. Meeting set up with Sneha and will be reaching out to Katie soon.

Demo with SurveyMonkey
Translations for Apps team, obtaining translation reviews
re-ops support for WF post launch usability testing
working with Bárbara to replace images on Design Strategy website

There are some typos on the landing page.

Incentives, release form tracking, and participant management for iOS app research, Collab Translation, Wishlist, and Commons Query Service
Hosted Userlytics demo with the D/DR team and did some followup
Attended a demo with Toluna and am currently trying to understand its costs and capabilities
Closed out the LimeSurvey theme task with Daniel and Tanja

I completed my conversations with designers and documented the findings in this summary (private link). After discussing the insights with Nico, we agreed on the identified priority areas. I have also shared the document with Leila and Rita for their review.

Weekly update:
2 more interviews EN wiki participants
Revised materials for project scope pivot
Coordinated with JA vendor
Recruitment for JA segment (unfortunately, the number of JA participants with EmailUser from our data pull list is very low)
Began anaylsis

Incentives/participant management for Toolforge Feedback, iOS app research, FlaggedRevisions, Collab Translation, Wishlist
Userlytics contract renewal
began testing out lookback.io capabilities

2 conversations this week

no update

no update

Translations for Automoderator and iOS app research
Incentives/participant management for Toolforge Feedback, iOS app research, FlaggedRevisions, Collab Translation, Wishlist
Interpretation for Collab Translations
Joy and I are engaged with Userlytics for a consulting project

Another conversation this week

Weekly update:
Mike and I conducted 3 interviews with our target population, which brings the total complete to 7 including pilots.
We onboarded Project Kobo, our research partner for the Japanese segment. I prepared all of the Japanese materials.
Mike began preparing materials for the Arabic segment.
Recruitment is ongoing (it has been a time-consuming process, set back by a couple of hiccups. We are also getting responses from users the data pull list who don't recall having made edits to WP, which disqualifies them for this study.)

Responded to Leila's comments in doc. Tanja provided a spreadsheet of usage over the past year [private link].

Presented updates [private doc] to language services at the Research team meeting. Also presented updated process to the team members present at the DR team meeting so they can make orders on behalf of Designers and Research team members when I'm not able. Designers can access information about the available language services and the process for requesting/ordering in the Research Ops Dashboard in Notion [private link].

Spoke with Carolyn about challenges with testing (particularly editing) on mobile. Seems like one of the big challenges cannot be solved by a 3rd party tool, and would need internal engineering support or perhaps a community relations-led effort. It does seem like there could be an opportunity to establish a program around this need.

Various supports to both DR contractors this week with their projects, including several meetings with them
Translations for Wishlist
Incentives/participant management for Toolforge Feedback, Barriers to Editing on iOS, FlaggedRevisions, Collab Translation
Userlytics renewal, setting up UL demo for D/DR team, planning a UL lead workshop, and exploring a UX consulting project

2 more conversations this week

Weekly update:
Conducted the last (4th) pilot with an experienced editor
Created outreach materials, updated research materials
Weekly sync with Mike, Haley, and myself
Scheduled kickoff meeting with Japanese vendor for next week
Began sending recruitment messages for user interviews

Weekly update:
Conducted 2 pilots this week (possibly a 3rd on Sunday evening)
Supported Legal in writing contract terms for Japanese vendor
Summarized interviews for easy comparison analysis
Discussed first pilot with Haley, refined discussion guide
Received datapull of usernames from Shay.

materials development, recruitment, incentives, translation, and re-ops support for several projects: Flagged revisions, collaborative translation, edit patrol, toolforge feedback, alt-text project with a member of the external research community

Weekly update: We submitted a BAR for the vendor who will support us with the Japanese interviews. We conducted an exploratory pilot, which was very informative.

Attended a demo for Lookback.com, which is supposed to be a user testing platform optimized for mobile testing. I submitted a $0 BAR for legal & security review so that we can play around with the free trial. I researched out to Design to see who could test the platform.

Met with Jahnavi to discuss research ops support for Collaborative Translations
Created recruitment materials for Collab Translations and ToolForge Feedback
created coordination plans for the aforementioned projects
Attended two demos for user research products
Submitted BAR for Japanese vendor for Barriers to Editing on iOS
fulfilled more translation requests for Design team members

Spoke with more designers over the past 2 weeks

I finished the write-up of my recommendation for Leila to review. Doc [Private Link].

Translations for 2 surveys

After selecting a new translation/interpretation company to work with, I submitted the BAR, and wrote the SOW for the contract. I presented updates about translation at the D/DR meeting this week and updated the research ops dashboard with new information about options for translation quality.

Focused this week on understanding who besides DR uses Qualtrics

We continued to plan the project, finalized the research brief, and contacted our preferred Japanese research partner.

6 conversations this week

Obtaining translations for ModTools Recent Changes survey
2 BARs for language service companies
began preparing short prez to explain changes to translations for upcoming D/DR meetup
met with Userlytics account rep to discuss our contract renewal (April)
organized Knowledge Repo working session with DR team

held more conversations with designers this week

Update: @MRaishWMF and I have been working with @HNordeenWMF and @scblr to clarify the project goals and scope the project. A research brief is written and still undergoing refinements (private link).