How does a feature or product come to be? Using the new feature, Special:Insights, as an example, Stanley and Trevor take us through the process.
How do ideas become features?[]
- Scientific Method used to determine if a feature is viable
- Gathering a hypothesis, gather data, analyze data
- Product development
- Ideas become prioritized and developed
Product Development Cycle[]
- Ideas
- Prioritization
- Research, Design & Definition
- Development
- Feature Release
- Follow-up
- Repeat!
Where do we get our Ideas?[]
- Problems in the current Wikia product
- Our users
- New technology
- Wikia employees
- Inspiring Products
- Market Trends
What inspired the Idea for Special:Insights?[]
- Users wanted a better platform to view various stats/data
- Special:WikiStats was limited and considered “technical debt”
- Other major websites offer their users comprehensive data
Prioritization[]
Allocating time on projects can difficult to balance with employees times.
- prioritization in a nutshell; “dedicating employee time on _____ will best help us achieve our goals”
- Special:Insights Example - “Dedicating employee time on surfacing site data to contributors will best help us achieve more complete article pages.”
- Why? The most requested feature from our active users is data.
- Special:Insights Example - “Dedicating employee time on surfacing site data to contributors will best help us achieve more complete article pages.”
Research[]
- Sources for research
- Surveys
- A/B tests
- Discussions with users
- User testing
- Industry analysis
- Special:Insights Example(s) -
- What are the trends of our users?
- What do other sites offer their users?
- What kind of data do our users want?
- Special:Insights Example(s) -
Design[]
- Designs have many drafts and iterations. They evolve and adapt according to the research stage.
- What to consider when designing:
- Audience
- Feasibility
- Internationalization
- Multi-device support
- Consistency with the rest of our products
Definition[]
- Minimum Viable Product aka MVP
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_product
- Delivering fully functional feature or product
- Instead of taking 1-2 years to make something that might fail, making a product with many versions for quick feedback and learning from each iteration
- Special:Insights Example
- Focused on making the feature encourage edits as opposed to just showing data
- MVP was 4 lists that we could quickly get out of the door
- Special:Insights Example
Development & Release[]
- “Fail fast” - build intelligently yet quickly so we can validate hypothesis against real users. Then iterate.
- Multiple release vehicles available
- One single alpha community
- Labs
- By languages
- Opt-ins
- Special:Insights Example -
- Recycled existing special pages for quick go to market
- Built and tested in 3 weeks
- Shipped to a small handful of test communities
- Special:Insights Example -
Follow-up[]
- Collect & respond to user feedback
- Bug fixes
- Measure and reflection. Did we achieve our goals? Where can we improve? What are the next steps?
- Special:Insights Example -
- User feedback
- Feedback has been mostly positive
- The data is ok, but not really what I asked for. I want more!
- This isn’t new, I already have these special pages
- Usage data shows
- Most users fix one or two issues back to back
- Some users/communities have never used the feature
- Popular issue: The lists are finite
- Potential next steps
- Expand on lists - Give users more relevant data
- Explore and experiment with participation drivers
- User feedback
- Special:Insights Example -