Wikipedia:Teahouse/Design guidelines
Question forum »Host profiles »Guest profiles » Teahouse is built on some intentional guiding principles to give visitors a great experience.
Design/build guidelines
Everyone is welcome to contribute to growing Teahouse! If you'd like to build new features or processes for the project, here are some principles to keep in mind to make sure your new creation enhances the user-experience in keeping with the spirit of the project.
Build for new editors
- Everyone is welcome in the space, but new editors are the target audience of Teahouse.
- When creating something new, consider how it will affect new editors first, because this is our primary use-case.
- If your new thing is better for experienced editors but makes the experience worse for new editors, it probably doesn't belong in Teahouse
Keep it simple
- Wikipedia can be a complicated and confusing place for new editors. Teahouse works because it is simple and easy to use.
- If your new feature is truly intended for hosts only (ie not surfaced to guests), it can be slightly more complicated. Ideally, though, we want things to be clear and easy for everyone.
Make data-driven decisions
- Teahouse is based on research and experimentation to see what works.
- Asking questions like "what problem am I trying to solve?" and "what has past research shown works or doesn't work?" is usually a good place to start.
- Test your hunches. What works best for you might not be the best solution for your target audience. Think about how you can design an experiment to learn if your change or new feature is having a positive impact.
- Measure outcomes of changes, and make decisions for the future based on those outcomes.
Play with the Japanese Teahouse theme
- The theme of a Japanese
Grabbag (move elsewhere)
- TH design principles
- TH theme/tone
- Asymmetry/whimsy
- Surfacing activity and recency
- A warm, welcoming and friendly environment
- Comfortable for a wide demographic that includes as many of the contributors to Wikipedia as possible
- Allow people to see themselves as part of something, as creating a community
- Be simple and easy to follow
- Make the process of interaction as much like (what people expect of) the internet today as possible
- Both fit into the context of Wikipedia as naturally as possible, and stand out as a unique cohesive element
- To embody the ethos of the Teahouse through language, and in visual and interactive aspects
- Be clear and consistent: On every page you know you are in the Teahouse and you know its central purpose; the header of every page includes the Teahouse logo and a tagline, Peer support for new editors, part of the Wikipedia Community. From the landing page you are introduced to the three basic elements of the entire Teahouse, guests, hosts and questions. Every page has a clear set of links to each of these main pages of the project, one for guests, one for hosts, and one for the Q&A page.
- Highlight community: To show visitors that the Teahouse was inhabited by a community of real, friendly people, we encouraged all guests and hosts to include a picture of themselves or something important to them in their introduction. We made sure that pictures of people appeared above the fold on key pages.
- Surface activity: To generate participation and give guests a sense of what to expect, we used the front page to show guests that other people were also asking questions and introducing themselves. We displayed the most recent questions at the top of the Q&A board and made sure the space above the fold on all pages included active content, rather than just static text.
- Create a welcoming environment: We used warm colors, appealing visual and thematic elements in our design and used friendly and welcoming language throughout the site to assure that guests felt comfortable and confident in participating.
- Provide easy-to-use communication tools: We kept the barrier to participating on Teahouse low by trying to provide easy-to-use tools for creating a guest introduction and asking a question in the Q&A forum
- Present clear calls to action: We designed each page with a clear call to action ("Ask a question", "Introduce yourself") and kept instructions as clear and concise as possible.
- getting approval when needed for automated stuff, gadget-enabling
What belongs in Wishing Well
- requests for features
- gadgets
- templates
- etc?
- process/workflow enhancements
- new research/experiment
- bug fix