Portal:Toolforge/Ongoing Efforts/Toolforge Workgroup/Reports/FY2024-2025/OKR/6.3.8 Engaging with prospective users to explore Toolforge UI Prototype

Description

Engaging with prospective users to explore Toolforge UI’s early design prototype will help us uncover improvement opportunities and risks to be addressed in a follow-up iteration.

Reports

Final hypothesis report

1. Was the hypothesis supported or contradicted?

The hypothesis was supported. Exploring the Toolforge UI prototype with prospective users validated the relevance and usefulness of our planned MVP scope. It also revealed usability issues and potential risks to address in future design iterations.

2. What was accomplished during the hypothesis work.

Toolforge UI Scope document – We created a detailed, categorized scope of user needs for Toolforge UI, prioritized by MVP, MVP+, and post-MVP. This living document reflects our product vision, technical constraints, and incorporates feedback from users and subject-matter experts. It serves as a shared reference for planning implementation.

MVP User Exploration Findings – We conducted sessions with five prospective users to validate the usefulness and usability of our MVP prototype. Their input informed both usability improvements and new feature considerations, which were integrated into the scope document to guide future iterations.

Other activities:

We launched a survey campaign in Wikitech targeting newcomer Toolforge users to learn more about their experience and inform follow-up research. Unfortunately, no valid responses were received.

We analyzed the feedback provided by members of the Toolforge community on Toolforge UI's Enhancement proposal page and incorporated in our scope spreadsheet.

We conducted multiple MVP prototype review sessions with subject-matter experts (Cloud Services team members or other staff). Their input helped surface technical and UX challenges and inspired refinements.

3. Major lessons learned:

The exploration with prospective users confirmed that Toolforge UI provides value compared to existing workflows. The direction of the MVP was validated.

Our design concept still needs some iteration to facilitate the understanding of certain technical elements, new concepts (such as 'component') and processes (such as 'deployment').

4. Potential next steps

As mentioned, our design concept requires updates to reflect pending usability improvements identified in the recent exchanges with users and SMEs (which are beings tracked in Figma). We expect to iterate on our prototype during Q4.

Further validation and refinement of the MVP scope will also continue through:

Community Consultation Session (April 15th): Aimed at more experienced users, this feedback session will help surface advanced needs and edge cases not revealed during earlier exploration (see full proposal and agenda).

Hackathon session (May 2nd): A similar MVP demo and feedback session will take place at the Wikimedia Hackathon (see session task)