Can design revitalise boring content repositories?

Ever wondered what makes Wikipedia so insanely popular? What is it that makes it one of the top 10 websites in terms of usage? What makes over 30 million internet users swear by the information it provides?

A quick Google search on this topic throws up results (which ironically are hosted on Wikipedia itself) showing the following as the key reasons

1. Heavy focus on ease of editing: Wikipedia articles are extremely easy to edit. Anyone can click the edit link and update the article. Since review is a communal function here and everyone who reads an article and corrects it is a reviewer
2. An Open Content Repository: Knowing this encourages more users to contribute, they know its a public project benefitting everyone
3. A relevant and up to date world view: Wikipedia, has contributors from many areas of the world, who provides its readers with a “world view” that could not be provided simply by few contributors from a limited region. This also serves to eliminate cultural bias in articles as well as helps keep the content up to date on issues globally
4. Easy usability and fast access: The presence of easy to use templates and no nonsense layout makes uploading content really simple

There are certain other factors which make it successful as well, but the ones mentioned above are key.

But if you ask for my personal opinion, I think Wiki can become much better!

So curators of Wiki…in case you are listening…please consider the following changes

• Contextualization: Most users generally tend to search about a certain set of topics under a broader area of interest. For instance, I might be a music aficionado and refer to Wiki for information about various genres or artists. Easy access to these topics of interest, maybe in the form of shortcuts or tiles on the page would certainly make my life much easier.
• Improved searchability: The age of Google has made us addicted to query based search. We automatically tend to look for the search tab for easy access to our topic of interest. Making the search bar one of the prominent elements of the homepage sure helps
• Easier and more convenient templates: While Wiki sticks to its standard content template, a little more variation in templates with easy to upload content and image options would make it much more attractive. The templates could be based on the type of content with appropriate colour schemes. This would also encourage more visual content to be uploaded making it more engaging for the reader

One of the leading global coffee chains came to us with a similar problem. They had an internal content encyclopedia (similar to Wikipedia) which contained important information and guidelines to be followed for designing and launching new stores globally. It was also a crowdsourced platform where their store designers could upload designs, learnings and best practices for the benefit of the global design team and associated vendors. In a nutshell, it was a treasure trove of useful information. However the adoption rate of their Wiki was abysmal. And they wanted to change that.

We applied the above mentioned design principles to revitalize the content repository. We kept search as the key element of the design keeping in mind user behavior and preferences. We also found out that their users generally tend to refer to only 3 or 4 topics most of the time, so we put quick access tabs on the home page with links to frequently accessed topics contextualized to the user. To make the page aspirational, we also added a store of the week which would encourage store designers across the globe to get their store on the home page!

One of the main reasons which discouraged authors/designers to contribute content was that it was painful for authors. They had to struggle to publish any article; to the extent that they had to learn and code at times when required to add those page breaks, or additional images — adding anything complex like links or embedding videos from the web was out of question. In addition to this, they had to wear a designer’s hat to make the page visually appealing. We created a set of templates which were visually attractive as well as easy to work with. Images were easy to upload and text content could just be dumped on the text editor. The template would then convert it into a format which was beautiful and would make the designers happy with what they posted. And that’s a tough job…trust me!

We created a set of templates which were visually attractive as well as easy to author. Images were easy to upload and text content could just be dumped on the text editor. The template would then convert it into a format which was beautiful and would make the designers happy with what they posted. And that’s a tough job…trust me!

These changes encouraged greater participation from the community of contributors and users, making their version of the Wiki a huge success! Store designers refer to the Wiki now more than ever, resulting in improved adherence to guidelines, better designs through global inspirations, improved local context and much faster store rollouts.

Some might even say that improved design makes coffee tastier!