Talk:Wikimedia Apps/Team/iOS/Watchlist

Hello!

Saying hi to anyone who may be following the project. RWambua-WMF (talk) 13:08, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

Hey! Just leaving some feedback here. I don't use the Watchlist so I cannot comment on the designs as how they apply to the task of going through the watchlist, but I have some preferences in terms of general navigation and design patterns:

- I prefer the navigation bar at the top. At the bottom it clutters the view and I'm not sure what the extra button is adding. The only times I prefer buttons at the bottom is when the view has sections (tabbed view) or when there are key actions that should be accessible.

- For the diffs, I would choose a mix of the two designs. I like that the versions are listed side by side at the top, but I prefer seeing deletions/additions together. The way versions are listed in the second design takes too much space and pushes the key part of this view (the diff itself) below the fold.

- Of the rest of the images, the only one that stands out is the undo modal. I don't know how much text people use to undo edits, but it seems like very little space if it's meant to allow a long line of text.

--JCNunez (WMF) (talk) 17:12, 10 May 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, Juan, so much for sharing your thoughts on our ongoing project. We genuinely appreciate your input.

Just to make sure we understand correctly, are you referring to the Watchlist home feature or the diff navigation?

If you're talking about the Watchlist navigation, we completely agree with you. Based on similar feedback, we've decided to switch to a top navigation bar, as it better matches what users expect and offers improved functionality. Regarding the button/icon you mentioned, it represents the inbox and provides a direct link to your messages.

On the other hand, if you're talking about the diff navigation, moving it from its current location might disrupt the experience for our existing users, as it's a familiar interaction point for many of them.

Your insights on the diff views are truly valuable. We strive to present changes in a clear and concise manner, which is why we've actually decided to make the diff view dynamic! We are considering a side-by-side view for default and small text sizes, and once larger text sizes are used, we plan to switch to a stacked view. Regarding grouped additions and deletions, I would like to further explore that idea with you. Could you provide more details?

Lastly, your point about the undo modal is indeed noteworthy. We will include it in our usability testing to investigate further. To stay updated on this task, you can follow this link: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T334218

Once again, we sincerely appreciate your valuable insights as they greatly contribute to our goal of delivering an excellent user experience for iOS Watchlist. ARamadan-WMF (talk) 08:47, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

As a Watchlist user who utilizes the iOS app, I'm excited for these changes! My only feedback is that I like the idea of keeping the filtering options near search (AKA this design). That seems logical and the more expected UI / UX. Thanks for working on this! KStoller-WMF (talk) 18:26, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

Hi Kirsten!

Thank you for sharing your input. We really appreciate it.

I'm happy to inform you that we have decided to go with the filter design you mentioned! It seems to be the optimal choice for the UI/UX and will ensure that users feel most comfortable using it.

Once again, thank you for your valuable opinion. ARamadan-WMF (talk) 08:51, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

TheDJ

• I really like the summary of the page at the bottom as in the first design.
• Diff view: I'd like to propose another option. The basis is the stacked design, but by default only show the metadata of the "to" version, and for From only show a show/hide. The to information generally is much more important when you are paging through the list. The From information generally much less so (really only when you revert, as it determines where you revert TO). I personally really like the diff of the Github app which might serve as an inspiration.
• When doing the above, we should show the From information in the dialog BEFORE doing the revert, as part of the action.
• Ideally, we should indicate when there is more than 1 changeset shown in the dialog (when diffing to current revision or something). Not sure if this info is currently available to diff actions however.
• We can indicate if the shown diff is To the 'current'/'latest' revision
• I like the idea the user names being clickable action buttons, but worry about the discoverability. Can there be something like a dropdown indicator perhaps ?
• I like that we are taking care of the difference between Rollback and Undo, but I think generally
  • Rollback has the side effect of rolling back any other changes that were made by that user, immediately preceding this change.
  • Both of them really should only be used for vandalism and obvious problems. This is something that should be communicated via the interface.
• I think we should have "History" and "Edit old version" actions, perhaps even "Edit new version"-actions.
  • If you look at a diff, it can be very important to take a quick look at the history of a page before making a decision. We should enable to do this, preferably without having to leave the diff interface (A 'quicklook').
  • A common alternative to reversion is simply opening the old version and saving that with an edit summary. this is essentially a reversion but without giving a judgement of vandalism or bad actor indication on the edit that you are reverting.

Thank you —TheDJ (Not WMF) (talk • contribs) 11:46, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

Hello Derk-Jan!

Thank you for providing us with your insightful feedback and valuable ideas to enhance the user experience of our iOS app. We greatly appreciate your detailed input.

We would like to address the points you mentioned below:

Page Summary: We appreciate your feedback on this matter, and we will explore the possibility of retaining the page summary in the top design, which aligns with our current direction.

Diff View: Your suggestion to modify the stacked design and emphasize the "to" version more prominently is indeed worth investigating. We find your inspiration from the GitHub app for our diff design to be an excellent idea. We plan to incorporate it into our usability testing questionnaire. You can follow the progress on this task.

Displaying "From" Info: Your suggestion to display the "From" information before performing a revert makes sense and adds clarity to the revert process. However, implementing this may pose an additional challenge as it would require translation into various languages. We will carefully consider this aspect.

Indicating Multiple Changesets, "History," and "Edit" Actions: Thank you for bringing up these points. We agree with your viewpoint. Currently, we are investigating whether the API supports usernames as action buttons, as well as the usability of the "History" and "Edit" actions.

Rollback vs Undo: We acknowledge that the distinctions between these actions may appear redundant. To ensure clear implications, we will revisit this section of the interface and make any necessary improvements.

Dropdown: In our design, we utilize a standard iOS button component with a menu to indicate its tappable nature and enhance its visibility. We believe that adding an additional dropdown indicator, such as a chevron, for every button could increase cognitive load for users. You can read more about the pattern we are following in Apple's developer documentation.

Thank you once again for your valuable feedback. We truly appreciate your involvement in improving our app's user experience. If you have any further suggestions or questions, please don't hesitate to let us know. ARamadan-WMF (talk) 10:26, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

Watchlist

I’m not a particularly active editor - I’m confused as to where/why I’d use the watchlist. I have “notifications” that I can view to see activity (I think) and a“saved” articles section that I can use to flag and save things I want to review later. I understand I may not be the target for this as a casual reader, just sharing my feedback. Aardvarkanilk (talk) 15:49, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

Hello @Aardvarkanilk,

We appreciate your valuable feedback!

The "Watchlist" feature is primarily designed for users who actively edit or monitor specific articles. By adding an article to your watchlist, you can easily track changes made to that article, including who made the changes and what was specifically modified.

However, your comment brings up an important point. We understand that the functionality of the Watchlist feature may not be entirely clear to all users, especially those who primarily use the app for reading and saving articles for later.

We are actively working on making the usage of the Watchlist more intuitive and ensuring that its purpose is transparent. Your feedback is extremely valuable in guiding these improvements. It's important to us that the Wikipedia platform caters to both casual readers and active editors, and we appreciate your engagement and input. ARamadan-WMF (talk) 08:52, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

Also, Please follow the watchlist project page for more details. ARamadan-WMF (talk) 18:26, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

Feedback

I recently heard that mobile watchlist had launched and was excited to try it. Thanks for working on this! Here's a couple pieces of feedback to consider:

• It's basically impossible to discover the existence of watchlist in the apps when it's buried two layers deep under Settings. This is the wrong place in the app's information architecture to put a tool that you might check every day. I know the main tabs of the app are reader-oriented and this is good, but there are a number of ways I could imagine making watchlist more accessible to editors...
  • put a card in Today view on Explore that calls out how many new edits are within your watchlist
  • opt in push notifications with a daily batch of unseen edits (you could send a notification telling users who have the app installed and who have non-empty watchlists that this is available)
  • let me customize my tabs (I know this is probably a heavy eng lift). For instance I never use Places and would much prefer to have a main watchlist tab.
• Filtering is a little limited compared to desktop
  • At a minimum, I'd like to be able to filter by namespace
  • Ideal would be that I could use the custom filters I've already set on desktop. Not sure how many people use these, and I could imagine it's a power user feature but consistency here would be great.
• Viewing bugs
  • When I tap the title link for a Talk page, it goes to the mainspace article, not Talk.
  • When I tap on some project namespace pages like "Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Business" I just get an error and the page won't load. This should be findable in error logs I think.

Hopefully this is all helpful. Steven Walling (talk) 19:33, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Hello @Steven Walling,

Thank you for your detailed description to your experience in using the app.

This is Amal Ramadan, Sr. Community Relations Specialist supporting the mobile apps team in the fundation.

I created a Phabricator ticket for your suggestions and the iOS team will triagge it during the current week, you can subscribe to the ticket to be updated with the future actions that will be taken:

https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T357311

For the bugs section, can I ask you to send them when happening again with screenshots to ios-support@wikimedia.org, so I can follow them.

Your message is much appreciated. Don't hesitate to reach out to me for any other comments or feedback.

Thanks again,

ARamadan-WMF (talk) 12:35, 12 February 2024 (UTC)