Wikipedia Attribution Call-to-Action Variants Evaluation
Survey experiment evaluating alternative attribution CTA messages to understand how CTA framing influences perceptions, engagement intent, and alignment with Wikipedia’s identity and mission.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Attribution_CTA_Variant_Survey_-_May2026.pdf
May 2026
Bethany Gerdemann and Mike Raish

Sarai and Debra reviewed and I made updates based on their feedback. Stakeholders confirm they consider this complete. Closing out this project and task.

Semantic Search: Android MVP user research
Mixed-methods research evaluating the Semantic Search MVP, including user expectations, result relevance, AI perceptions, and onboarding experiences across app and non-app users.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Semantic_Search_MVP_Qual_Research.pdf
May 2026
Mike Raish and Sandra Abrouk for the Mobile Apps teams

@DDeSouza , over the next few working days, we need the current UXR site to be up to date.
https://design.wikimedia.org/strategy/ is currently confusing: it says Design on the top left, Codex on the top right, Strategy, etc. The left nav has a collapsable menu that says "strategy" and another one that says "about". We need this to look more cohesive while we are waiting on research.wm.org to be finalized for Codex. At the same time, we are currently working on re-doing some of the design elements in the preview pages you've created, so I don't want you to do a big UXR site re-design now only to have to change things once the design for research is settled. Therefore, either (a) make design.wm.org/strategy look like the UXR preview you created, OR change the following to the current site:

• Participant management for Growth Continuous Research and Toolforge conversations
• Planning next steps with Chris re: Toolforge conversations
• Vendor management for Attribution survey panel
• UXR website feedback and followup

Survey analysis and report deck are more/less complete. I've consulted with Yu-Ming on approaches, interpretations, and reporting, and incorporated that feedback. I've sent to Sarai and Debra for feedback. Report deck [private link].

Week of May 11:

• Recruitment and participant management for Growth Continuous Research and Toolforge conversations
• Quick turnaround translation and organized translation checks for Apps team in 6 languages
• Provided recruitment strategy advice for upcoming Article Guidance qual research
• Contract management with Centiment survey panel

Last week survey analysis was underway. I got through about 3/4+ of it. Unfortunately we never got the demographic data from the vendor so that piece of analysis is not complete. I'll get feedback from Yu-Ming on analysis approach and report on Tues.

I figured it out. Turns out a long time ago I saved some recovery codes onto to my laptop. Thank you

Thanks Andre. I'm happy to set that up. Would you happen to know with whom I should meet? Or how I can figure that out? Thanks for your help.

Research Project Updates
Considering that we're removing the initiatives section (see above comment), just update the (currently) "Timeline" (soon-to-be) "Research" page with the following projects:

Sandra completed the last round of user sessions; integrated results into report and presented to stakeholders. Report is uploaded to Commons. I'm closing out this project.

Week of April 27:
Onboarded onto projects and tasks that I'll be taking over for Mike as he goes on sabbatical
Facilitated soft launch and data collection of Attribution CTA Variant survey
Organized website migration and updates
Participant management for Toolforge conversations
Contract management with Dscout
Prepared and presented materials for recruiting at Hackathon

I received the dataset from the vendor but noticed some quality issues. They replaced the problematic responses.

Completed soft survey launch on Friday, and data collection began over the weekend.

We’re planning a few updates to the Design Strategy website and would appreciate your help with the following:

Week of April 13:

Week of Mar 30:

Mar 20:

Recruitment/participant management for MediaWiki Interfaces team API conversations, Isaac's KR
Screener writing and recruitment tasks for Guided Article in VE.
Translations for Hybrid Search: French UI, GA in VE recruitment materials, quick surveys
Budget housekeeping
Preparing for quicksurvey deployments for recruitment

Hey Daniel. Please double check the sampling rate on these. Also, let me know if it makes sense to utilize the question field here, as written above, or if it makes sense to leave blank as we did in the past. Thank you!

• Worked with Bárbara on finalizing Mobile Editing Toolbar usability tests, plus recruited experienced editors to take them
• Recruitment/participant management for MediaWiki Interfaces team API conversations, Isaac's KR, and Mobile Editing Toolbar tests.
• Contractor onboarding tasks
• Submitted 2 BARs
• Helped Uzoma finalize a community survey for article guidance, obtained translations
• AI experimentation pre-work for team discussion
• Housekeeping in team budget doc, program management airtable, participant database, and knowledge repo

Presented proposal to Leila and Debra. Decided on 10% of essential work over 3 months to improve the design research knowledge repo. LZ decided against pursuing a larger knowledge management system or knowledge services at this time given the current priorities.

• Finished and confirmed materials, processes, coordination for MediaWiki Interfaces team API conversations recruitment
• Furthered collaboration with Legal on data handling for creating a Technical Contributors Pool
• Discussions about Legal Memo re: seeking a low-risk solution to querying user email
• Planning for upcoming Qualtrics usage
• Discussion with Apps about upcoming research idea; submitted pre-request to Debra
• Working with Daisy on new editor recruitment, both for Isaac's KR and Growth continuous research. Confirmed processes and materials. Sent out recruitment messages. Tracking release forms and beginning the participant management process.
• Contractor onboarding tasks

• Discussed proposal with Debra
• Set up meeting to discuss with Leila
• Researched software solutions

• Translation and staff translation check for Apps team
• created screener and recruitment materials for MediaWiki Interfaces team API conversations recruitment
• discussed recruiting technical contributors pool; began process of working with Legal on data handling
• Planning for upcoming Qualtrics usage
• Materials development and recruitment for a quick-start session for Growth's continuous research initiative. Planning for the formal proceedure.
• Working on recruitment plans for WE1.9.1
• Office hours with external researcher; planning recruitment for their editor workshops

• Contacted all Qualtrics users to understand their survey plans for the rest of the FY, in prep for Comparative Reader Research
• Created processes for Growth continuous research initiative
• Organized special recruitment with Userlytics for motion sensitivity testing
• Assisted Snehal in setting up/piloting user test; created screener

Finished proposal (private link) and shared with Debra for feedback. Revised based on feedback

Week of Jan 26:

Week of Jan 26:

• incentives, interpretation, and participant database updates for Recognition
• special recruitment planning and assistance for technical contributors
• recruitment and logistics planning for Growth continuous research initiative
• specialized recruitment for accessibility testing with folks with motion sensitivities
• onboarded Lu to research ops

Week of Jan 12:

• reading on best practices within the industry, knowledge management systems, tooling options, management options, etc
• conversations with Daisy, Sonja, and arranged conversations with Justin and UX at Mozilla

Week of Jan 12:

• translation requests for Apps experiment
• interpretation requests for Recognition interviews
• incentives and participant database updates
• Coupa request

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