Reading/Multimedia/Media Viewer/Survey/Results - 05-05-2014

Here are the survey results for Media Viewer, as of Monday, May 5, 2014 at about 18:00 UTC.

The goal of this survey is to evaluate user satisfaction with Media Viewer and identify issues that are important to our community. To that end, a prominent button in the tool invites users to answer 3 quick questions, in a small popup-up survey form available in selected languages. Media Viewer is being gradually released worldwide, as described in this release plan.

Overall, 1,727 responses were collected across eight different languages: Catalan, Dutch, English, French, Hungarian, Spanish and Portuguese. Most of the responses came from these three large pilots: Dutch, French and Hungarian. For full results, check out this spreadsheet.

Findings

• On average, about 65% of survey respondents find Media Viewer useful, across all languages. About 28% do not find it useful, and 7% are not sure.

• On average, 73% of readers find the tool useful -- more than editors (66%) or active editors (49%).

• The majority of survey respondents are readers (56%), but editors (30%) and active editors (14%) are well represented.

• Approval rates have been increasing for all large surveys (e.g.: Hungarian approval started around 42%, and is now up to 57%).

• More users found Media Viewer useful on sites in English (72%) or French (71%) than on sites in Dutch (53%) or Hungarian (57%).

Comments

Here are some of the comments we heard often:

• People who found the tool useful liked the larger images, the modern look, the simple interface, the next/previous buttons, the info panel and more recently, the faster load times.

• People who thought the tool was not useful disliked the change in their interface, the lack of zoom, the slow image load, the image size, and having to look for info, Commons or exit buttons.

We hand-coded about 1,140 comments and sorted them into 3 categories: Useful, or actionable suggestions (30%); No action needed (69%); and Inappropriate (1%). The change requests below are from the 'useful' category.

Change requests

• We identified 32 change request categories from about 414 individual user requests (drawn from 'useful' comments across all languages).

Here are the most frequent requests:

• • Want zoom (21%)
  • Too slow (20%)
  • More image sizes (8%)
  • Want full screen or larger images (5%)
  • Can't find info (5%)
  • Can't find Commons link (4%)
  • Easy way to exit (4%)
  • More info above (4%)
  • Can't find download tool (3%)
  • More prominent caption (3%)
  • Want modal window (3%)
  • Images don't load (3%)

To learn how our team plans to address these requests, read the Next steps section below.

For more detailed survey results, check out this spreadsheet.

Next steps

The multimedia team is already working on several practical solutions to some of the frequent requests above.

Zoom

By far the biggest issue reported so far is the lack of any zoom features, which make this tool inferior to the previous solution for viewing image details. To address this problem, the multimedia team has just implemented this link solution (#588)], which we plan to release next week. It will link to the original image outside of the Media Viewer, to provide the same functionality as before (users can then use their browser's built-in zoom function to view details). Better versions of this zoom feature may be implemented later this year, based on user feedback.

Faster load

The next biggest issue is slow load times, but this feedback is mostly from the earlier Hungarian pilot, and those comments appear to be less frequent now: as more users click on thumbnails around the world, these images are cached, so they load faster. (In fact, many French users commented that the images load a lot faster now than when they had to go to Commons -- partly because previous pilot users had already cached them.) To increase speed even more, we're now working with our operations team to pre-render images in the background (#301). For now, we will keep monitoring metrics and survey dashboards to confirm that image load times keep improving over time.

More sizes

Requests for more image sizes may be partly addressed once we release the zoom link described above. To further address this issue, we are also considering a short list of images in different sizes, as proposed in this ticket (#582).

Larger images

Requests for full screen or larger images could be addressed by the zoom and 'more sizes' features above. We will wait to see the impact of these improvements before taking further action on this issue.

Finding info

Many users do not notice right away that there is more information in the meta-data panel below the image. To make it easier to discover this meta-data, we now animate this panel when you first start using the tool (#548). We also propose to highlight the chevron more prominently and support down arrow presses, as proposed in this ticket (#554).

Finding Commons link

Many users do not notice right away that the Media Viewer includes two links to Commons, where people can edit or learn about an image on its file repository page. To address this issue, we propose to make the Commons icon more prominent, as well as highlight it when you first start using the tool, as proposed in this ticket (#583).

Easy way to exit

Many users do not notice right away that they can click on the 'X' button or press 'escape' to close the Media Viewer. To address this issue, we are considering options such as highlighting the close button when you first start using the tool, as proposed in this ticket (#593).

More prominent caption

Many users have requested that we display the image caption above the fold, when one exists. To address this issue, we are considering options such as showing that caption in place of the filename, right below the image, as proposed in this ticket (#589).

We hope you find these survey results helpful. We are learning a great deal from this feedback, which helps our team track what users think of our tools -- as well as focus on the key issues, and prioritize them for future development. Surveys like these are particularly useful for features that impact readers, who are unlikely to comment on talk pages.

We plan to post more survey updates after the Spanish and Portuguese releases — and again after the English and German releases.

Dashboards

Here are links to survey dashboards with live results, as well as survey forms - and comments where available:

• Catalan results dashboard | Comments | Survey form
• Dutch results | Survey form
• English results dashboard | Comments | Survey form
• French results | Survey form
• German results | Survey form
• Hungarian results dashboard | Comments | Survey form
• Portuguese results | Survey form
• Spanish results | Survey form

To read survey comments, click 'Show replies' in the second section of the live dashboard.

For more detailed survey results, check out this spreadsheet.