 Hello and welcome to Empowering Participation, a user-centered approach to low-stake editathons. I am Michelle Chin, a user-experienced designer. I love solving problems and empowering people. And I'm originally from Maryland in the United States, but I currently live in Oakland, California. You can find me on Wikipedia as DCScogirl. And yes, I actually love Scott Music to this day. Even though most people have outgrown it, I still love it. All right. So in today's talk, we're going to talk about user-centered design. I'll give an overview of what that is. Using the user-centered design process to create an editathon, and some top tips for running a low-stakes editathon, as well as some resources. So user-centered design is a process to create solutions while keeping the user in mind. So rather than finding a problem and creating a solution that you think is going to be really great, you're instead kind of understanding the people who would use your solution, understand their background, their goals, the needs, how people work. And they think and so on. And that influences how we craft solutions. And the idea is that when we keep the user in mind, the solutions we create will be more useful for them. There are four phases, roughly, to this process. So research and empathize, define and design, test and iterate, and then finally implementing your solution. So when I was thinking about Wikipedia and contributing to it, I had gone to an editathon and I found out about the gender gap. And I looked up some of my favorite UX book authors, and they didn't have Wikipedia pages. And I was really surprised. If they did, it was really, really sparse and small. So I really wanted to figure out how I could get more people to get more content in Wikipedia about women in tech. And then I also wanted to see how we can get more people to contribute because there aren't a lot of women contributors. There just aren't a lot of contributors compared to how many people read Wikipedia. And contributing is easy and it's fun. So I wanted to see if we can find a way to bridge that gap a little bit. So when it comes to research, that's where you ask your people or the users questions that can help provide context and shed light on why things might be or how things can be improved. And with that research, you're empathizing. And that's really listening to what people are saying, picturing yourself in their position and really trying to understand their perspective. So when I did the research and empathize part, I asked them questions. So I asked them, would you be interested in improving Wikipedia? Have you edited Wikipedia before? What's preventing you from editing it? Would you like to learn as a something of interest? And then what questions do you have about editing? And so some of the feedback I got, people said that they tried editing years ago, but it was really too difficult. And I was there. I understood that it was a very hard to use interface. A lot of people mentioned that they weren't sure where to start. They didn't know what the process was like. And there aren't really easy to find resources or TikTok videos on how to edit Wikipedia. Maybe there are. But I think a lot of people also mentioned that they were intimidated. They felt that while they appreciated Wikipedia, they didn't know enough about anything to really add content. And they didn't want to be wrong because they knew how many people did use Wikipedia. So that was like some of the context that I received. And I fully understand that it can be really intimidating to edit that. So I wanted to make sure people felt comfortable editing and knew that it was OK to edit. And they didn't have to do anything super dramatic to contribute. And they can still make a big difference. All right. So the defining design process, when you do your research, you then want to identify how you might approach your solution. So you want to ask yourself, based on what you're kind of thinking about, like, is how I'm defining a solution, addressing the problem, and meeting the needs of people. So when you kind of define that, you can then decide, design the solution. So you can think about what you want to take as a solution. So you might have one solution in mind. So I knew it was going to be an edit-a-thon of some sort. And you can try that and see how it goes. Maybe a solution you're trying to create might have a lot of solutions. And you can brainstorm several, get feedback on a couple, and then maybe try one or two out if they are successful. Great. If not, then you can always go back to that brainstorm list that you have and see if there's any other ideas that might be helpful. So when it came for this project, when it came to defining things and designing things, I knew that I wanted to have a virtual edit-a-thon workshop. And what that meant in terms of the design is that it would be an online presentation that had some educational content as well as serve as a working session. And I also wanted to focus on beginners, so absolutely no editing experience whatsoever, because a lot of people who were interested just didn't have any idea on editing Wikipedia, how to go about it. And when it came to designing that, I wanted to definitely focus on reducing the intimidation. So some of the beginner things I wanted to definitely include was like creating an account just to get them started. I knew that as long as they created an account, that was like one step further into their path to editing. I wanted to go over some editing guidelines because it's definitely important that they know some of the foundational aspects to editing. And then I wanted to provide some easy editing options. So I didn't want people to think that they had to immediately start contributing lots of paragraphs and researching a lot about a person or a topic that they could easily do some small things to make a big difference. And because they were going to be new and I wanted them to focus on the editing experience, that also meant that I would be gathering resources for them. So I gathered a list of people who had pages that needed to be improved as well as people who didn't have pages and also a bunch of resources online from like articles and other publications that had information about that person. So that way they didn't have to go searching on the Internet and trying to like vet sources as well as find them to create Wikipedia. They can just focus on participating in editing pages. And lastly, I wanted to make sure that I included a live demo so people could see how easy it was to edit. So if I can show them quickly live online, they could see, oh, I can do this just as easily. It didn't take Michelle too long to do this. So I wanted to show a live demo. And lastly, as part of the project, I wanted to identify ways to keep the momentum going. So the workshop was going to be helpful, but it wasn't going to be enough time to have people really get into the editing and continuing the editing. It's just like really kind of like a starter kit to editing and that people would need to like spend time outside of the workshop to continue to edit. And so I wanted to think about creating ways of continued contribution. All right. So for the overall design approach, I kept a couple things in mind. So really focused on removing the pressure of contributing. There's a lot of intimidation behind it. So emphasizing beginners. If they just created a count and they listened into what was going on, I think that was a win and that was okay for me. Providing just the right amount of info. So definitely wanted to provide some information, but not overwhelm them to the point where like they think this is unapproachable. And then anything else I did, I just made it super easy for people to edit successfully. There is a lot you can do in Wikipedia, but this was just a beginner course. And wanted to make sure that they had a successful time editing and that they felt like they were doing well. Okay. So for the design aspect, I'll show you a couple slides and pages from my editathon as an example. For the design, I had a one hour workshop. I didn't want to have it too long. Could have easily been longer, but keeping people online for over an hour is a little bit much. The theme I chose was amplifying women in tech, specifically around authors from UX design development and data fields. So there's a screenshot of my slide deck as well as the actual project page. I also touched on the importance of contributing. So I showed some data about the gender gap on Wikipedia, who uses Wikipedia and why. So not just the people, but also AI is using it to train from. And then really just emphasize this information to get people excited about editing and contributing. I of course went over some basic guidelines for contribution. So a lot of people have questions around like, what is a reliable resource? So I went over some policies, as well as the reliable resources to get them started with. And then I think this is the part that I had the most fun doing is like pulling five to seven examples of really nice areas that are great for beginners to edit. So rather than people thinking that they had to write several paragraphs and do a lot of research, showed some really tiny examples of improving the lead section or linking out to other pages, creating, editing typos, adding categories, all that type of smaller things. And just really talked about the benefits of making these improvements to help with readability, findability, making Wikipedia more robust without having to feel like you had to write paragraphs about a person. After that, I did a live demo. So in the live demo, I showed how to do all those edits, like so editing the lead, adding links, fixing typos, all that type of stuff, showed how easy it was to do. Also showed where the sandbox was, and people really enjoyed it knowing that they had a safe space to go and edit and experiment with some of the formatting as well as some of the features like linking and stuff. People felt really comfortable. So even though they weren't editing actual live articles, they were playing in the sandbox, getting familiar with it, and they really felt good about that. And then I think also I showed how it's okay to make mistakes. I think that was really nice just because it shows that anybody, even people who are human and make mistakes, can edit Wikipedia and it's okay. So showed where I struggled and showed where I wasn't sure where to find some things. And showed that anyone could really edit this. You don't have to be an experienced editor to contribute. So back to the user-centered design process. You want to test and iterate. So that was the design part. When it came to test, this is where you take a prototype or a draft and test it out with people. Sometimes people call this a pilot, and this is just a good way of seeing how things will work out. Some people might take an outline and get feedback on it. In this case, I felt pretty confident in the slide deck that I had, and I just wanted to run through a lot of the actual session to see what that was going to look like. And then as you are testing it, you want to ask yourself, where are people doing well? Where are they struggling? Is the timing okay? Is it too short or too long? Am I spending too much time talking about one thing, but not enough on others? What's unclear? What are people asking questions about? Maybe that's something that you end up including in another slide or setting aside more time for. So I did a pilot, and then I iterated on that. And iterating is based on that feedback. You take the observations and make improvements before implementing the real thing. So in terms of my pilot, I did an internal mini editathon with my coworkers, and it was a legit editathon, but it was much smaller, like very, very low stakes. And I think for me, the biggest benefit of this in addition to getting feedback on content was that it was super helpful for me to work through the logistics. There were definitely a lot. So think about, I had a lot of tabs open. I had a slideshow. I was sharing stuff in slideshow view. I was sharing my screen in Zoom. I was answering questions in chat. So a lot of it was like a lot of going back and forth and being able to practice that was really helpful. In terms of the changes I made, I made some small tweaks to wording. As I was talking, I noticed a couple typos. I changed up some of the slide order because I realized some of it made sense if I showed it earlier. And then I made time for people to set up an account. So beforehand, I just let people, while they're waiting, set up an account. But this time, I actually made some space in the presentation to have them set up an account. And then the last phase is implementing. This is the quote unquote final stage of your process. And this is where you try out your solution. And because your solution was user-centered and you tested it before, it should go really well. I say it's the final stage in quotes because sometimes you might find some other feedback that you might want to iterate on and change things up or maybe you change the format. So it is fairly the final stage, but there is always room for improvement. In terms of my implementation, I hosted the edit-a-thon on March 22nd of this year. We had almost two dozen attendees actively wanting to learn how to edit. That was really exciting. It was really cool to welcome people into the world of editing. I had a lot of fun doing the presentation and working through things and just showing people how easy using Wikipedia was. I think from that, I learned a lot of things that I think are top tips that I wanted to share with you. Pilot, like I mentioned before, get comfortable with logistics. That was really, really helpful, especially if you're hosting a virtual edit-a-thon. I think tying the event to something special just makes it more meaningful. So for this, I tied it to Women's History Month, and the theme of International Women's Day was embracing equality. And so really said, this is a great way for us to embrace equality. And definitely keep things fun. I think people are very intimidated by editing Wikipedia, and this is just to say, hey, it's really easy. This is going to be a fun thing for you to participate in. So I use emojis and slide decks. I'll use memes and gifs. And I keep things very casual and relaxed. And then I think showing a live demo was really, really helpful as well, including showing how I was making mistakes that just shows that I'm human. I'm not great at this. Or when I couldn't find something in a little profile panel, I struggled. And people can see that I am not a professional editor, so to speak, but that I can tinker. And that tinkering is okay. I also shared the slide deck during my presentation as a reference. So people during the event, as I'm doing the demo, can reference easy areas to edit, or they can reference it later. So it's kind of like a nice guidebook. In terms of what could be improved, I think finding the time to keep the momentum going, I got really busy after March and wasn't able to sustain the project. But I definitely am picking this back up as a winter project since I won't be running around as much. And I think I might have to do a couple more intro sessions to get more people familiar with editing, which I think is fine. Definitely making the recording available is helpful. So you're not having to do this so often. And then I think the other thing was, the list of pages that I created that needed to be edited or created was a little overwhelming. And I think it just kind of, I wanted to show the need that there was a definite need for contributions, but maybe it was a little too much if people were like, oh my gosh, this is, I don't know where to start. So maybe having a little bit more of a focus list. And then I think the other thing is, I took this project on my own, which I think looking back, I should have gotten other people to help me organize. So I can keep the momentum going with organizing monthly editathons. So it didn't have to depend on just me and my schedule. People were definitely excited about helping. So definitely going to look into seeing if other people want to help host these editathons to get some more of the content created. And I wanted to send a slide of links. So for the actual Women in Tech Edithon I hosted, there's a link to the actual project page, the slide deck I used. Feel free to copy any of that information, the recording on YouTube if you wanted to see how I actually ran through the session. And then I'm definitely happy to answer any questions since I couldn't be there in person. Feel free to connect with me either on Wikipedia or LinkedIn or Twitter slash X. Happy to chat about this as well as other things. Yeah, thank you so much. And I hope everyone is having a great time this year at Wikimania. Alrighty.