> > I had a great conversation with Liam Wyatt at Wikimania (cc'ing him, in > case he doesn't follow this list). We talked about strategies for deploying > new products on Wikimedia projects: what works, what doesn't. He held up > the design/deployment process for Vector as an example of *good* process, > one that we should (re)adopt. > > Vector was created based on extensive user research and community > consultation[1]. Then WMF made a beta, and invited people across projects > to opt-in and try it out on prototype wikis[2]. The product team set public > criteria for when it would release the product as default across > production projects: retention of 80% of the Beta users who had opted in, > after a certain amount of time. When a beta tester opted out, they were > sent a survey to find out why[3]. The product team attempted to triage the > issues reported in these surveys, address them in the next iteration, or > (if they couldn't/wouldn't fix them), at least publicly acknowledge the > feedback. Then they created a phased deployment schedule, and stuck to > it[4]. > > This was, according to Liam (who's been around the movement a lot longer > than most of us at WMF), a successful strategy. It built trust, and engaged > volunteers as both evangelists and co-designers. I am personally very eager > to hear from other community members who were around at the time what they > thought of the process, and/or whether there are other examples of good WMF > product deployments that we could crib from as we re-assess our current > process. From what I've seen, we still follow many good practices in our > product deployments, but we follow them haphazardly and inconsistently.
I agree wholeheartedly with your email. But I wonder if this part is a bit looking at the past through rose coloured glasses. Vector roll out was certainly better than some other feature rollouts, but... it was hardly without pain if I remember correctly. Although it was a long time ago, and before I was involved on the dev side, so my memory is a bit fuzzy. -- -bawolff _______________________________________________ Design mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design
