Reinventing Wikimini, the Online Encyclopedia for Kids — Tech for Social Good
Wikiminions Team awarded the most completed Software Solution at deploy(impact) 2022: An Annual Software Development Program for Social Good supporting women transitioning into Technology.
deploy(impact), our yearly software development program aims at giving professionals, starting or transitioning into tech, hands-on experience in real-life tech projects for social good. This year’s edition awarded the Wikiminions team as the best Software Development Solution.
deploy(impact) 2022 hosted 64+ participants divided into nine teams working for 6 one-week sprints on a software development or data science project in partnership with Wikimedia CH, joining this edition as the project owner.
The software development project “Wikimini” consisted of redesigning an existing online encyclopedia fostering multi-level and safe educational resources for children and a platform for teachers to create learning paths for their students. During the closing ceremony on November 19, the jury panel evaluated all projects on different judging criteria, awarding the project teams with the highest scores. All 4 teams working on this project, dedicated their time, skills, and energy to create tech solutions they can be very proud of.
In this blog post, we will take a look at the features of the child-friendly and intuitive online encyclopedia created by the winning team Wikiminions. The team was composed of Andrea F. Quiroga, Emilia Rigo, Erianna Milia, Ezequias Calvo, Mariia Zhemela, and Ioana-Teodora Schipor with the guidance from team satellite Alexandra Bödtker.
The Project Goal and Setting Realistic Expectations
Emilia Rigo, the team’s project manager, led the on-site project presentation during the closing ceremony. Introducing her team’s final product to the jury panel and audience joining on-site and remotely, Emilia explained the project’s goal and expectations. Specifically, she shared that after a very brief discovery phase, the team concluded that a great kids’ encyclopedia is made up of easily accessible and safe content for kids.
With that in mind, the team defined the goal of the project:
“Excellent consumption experience for kids, the ability to create content in an easy and safe way for everyone”.
Based on the findings from the discovery phase, the team decided to focus on mobile first as 86% of swiss secondary kids already have a mobile, which they use several times a day. Up to 40% of these students are using it for their homework. Anticipating future needs, the team’s design is desktop responsive as well.
One of the requirements of the Project Owner, Wikimedia CH, was a teaching tool within the encyclopedia from which teachers could create learning paths for their students. Although the team wanted to tackle this task as well, they had to be realistic. As it was only a 6-weeks project, with limited resources and time constraints, they had to prioritize. Nevertheless, they worked out the concept and design for it too., which we will cover at the end of this article.
Choosing the Framework
After defining the project goal and prioritizing the features they are going to build, the team’s developers: Andrea Quiroga, Ezequias Calvo, and Teodora Schipor, evaluated the framework they would use. To make a conscious decision, the developers compared the XWiki Skins Extensions (SX) vs. React (a free and open-source front-end JavaScript library for building user interfaces) and made their decision taking into account 2 factors:
- that the framework route would give the team more flexibility,
- and it would be easier to support as an open-source project going forward
Taking these factors into consideration and with the added incentive that 2/3 developers in the team had previous experience with React, the team decided to go with React.
Personas and Product Demo
Through the product demo, Emilia Rigo, beautifully used storytelling to guide everyone at the closing ceremony through the discovery adventure of their three personas, Betty, Luc, and Mrs. Elizabeth as they explore the encyclopedia for the first time.
Emilia described Betty as a curious 13-year-old girl who loves to read about animals, and, Luc, Betty’s little brother, likes arts and related activities. Betty was introduced to Wikimini online encyclopedia by her teacher, Mrs. Elizabeth, and she is excited to explore it as she comes home from school one day and asks Luc to join her.
Redesigning the Encyclopedia
Given that Wikimini Encyclopedia is catered for both primary and secondary students, the team divided the content into two sections:
>Owls: content for kids between 11–14 yrs old
>Owlets: content for kids between 6- 10 yrs old
In each section, the content is tailored to the kid’s needs and reading ability. At any time, the kids can switch languages by accessing the sidebar menu on the left corner and choosing between English and German or accessing the “Help” section to find out more about how to use the encyclopedia.
When navigating in the Owlets section, Luc, Betty’s little brother and primary school student can:
- Read articles
- Learn new words in the dictionary
- Find activities
- Add content
Inside the owlets section, Emilia demonstrated how Luc can research an article about his favorite subject, arts.
To start, first, Luc needs to choose, “Article” in the submenu and then choose to research by the letter, or by thematic categories (Language, Arts, Maths, Science, and Sports).
When Luc finds the article he wants to read, he can choose between reading level 1, simpler and shorter articles, or 2, an enhanced version of the same article with more content.
Not to overwhelm the kids with too much content at first, the articles in the encyclopedia are structured into the introduction and content section which are expandable by an expand/collapse arrow. At the bottom of the page, there are automatically suggested articles based on relevance from where Luc can continue navigating and exploring related topics and activities.
When Betty wishes to research in the Owls an article about her favorite subject, animals, she has the same content categories — Articles, Dictionary, Activities, and Be a Writer — with the difference that in the Articles option she will find many more thematic categories that match secondary school subjects.
As noted by Ilario Valdelli, Project Owner, jury member, and also a former teacher:
the dictionary option in both the Owls and Owlets section is a very helpful tool for students.
He explained that kids often don’t know the meaning of words and carry on reading anyway, which can compromise the understanding of a text and consequently grade results.
Similar to other features created by the Wikiminions team, the “Dictionary” is also very intuitive to use. When researching the word “intrigue”, Luc simply chose “Dictionary”, typed the word “intrigue” and was prompted with the search result.
To finish the product demo presentation, Emilia continued using her storytelling skills to demonstrate how Betty did her homework — writing a piece of content for the encyclopedia. To do it, Betty:
> Chose the “Be a Writer” option,
> Typed the keyword about the topic she wants to write about — Salt Painting
> No article was found, but
> Betty was given the options: “Write an article”, “Create an Activity”, “Add to Dictionary”.
> She chose “Create an Activity”
In the next stage, Betty was prompted to enter the activity name, and add an image and description before publishing the activity.
Assuring Content Quality and Safety
Part of the Wikiminons project goal included making sure kids had access to easy and safe content. Erianna Milia, one of the team’s UX/UI Designers, presented the concept of the teaching tool designed by the team and how teachers can review kids’ content before publishing and therefore assuring content quality and safety.
Also using storytelling, Erianna showed how Miss Elizabeth, Betty’s teacher, just started using the Classroom feature as a tool to communicate, assign and review homework to her students.
Inside the classroom, Miss Elizabeth can assign homework to all her students or to specific ones.
The Product Roadmap and Future Features
Throughout the 6-weeks of the project, the Wikiminions team had lots of ideas on how to improve Wikimini Encyclopedia. Instead of throwing these ideas away, they decided to collect them all and create a roadmap displaying the suggested features and where they could take the current solution if they were given the chance, time, and resources to do it.
By the closing ceremony on November 19, the Wikiminions’ encyclopedia has two main categories: Owls and Owlets, distinguished by age group and reading level with the ability to switch at any time. The two newly added features: the “Dictionary” and “Activities” sections support a more hands-on and experimental learning experience for kids.
Looking forward, the Wikiminions envisage the second version of the Wikimini platform on enhancing safety, accessibility, collaboration, and building the teaching tool itself. In the third stage, interactive content and the introduction of a third content category for early learners and pre-schoolers.
The Team Learnings
Emilia Rigo, also covered during their final project presentation, her team’s learning curve, both individually and as a team.
One of the team’s biggest learnings was how to collaborate and communicate efficiently. They also profited from understanding what they did well as a team, which was scope management and prioritization.
Looking retrospectively, the team highlights the design review as a task they could improve in the future. Due to time constraints and schedule conflicts, the team worked unsynchronized on it, recognizing the potential benefits of working as a team on this task in future projects.
Wikiminions proposal
Find the team’s developed app and demo on the womenplusplus GitHub.
Final Considerations
deploy(impact) 2022 offered a great learnings experience not only to the Wikiminons team but to everyone involved. Many participants highlighted the following as their biggest achievements during this project:
the great opportunity to work in a team throughout the whole product lifecycle to produce software solutions.
Why is it so important? Many talented professionals transitioning to the tech industry make their way into their dream roles by teaching themselves on the go and practicing in solo projects. When looking for a job in their desired role (software developer, UX/UI designer, project manager, data scientist, etc), recruiters and HR teams look for 2 main previous experiences: real-life projects (implemented) and working within a team.
During deploy(impact), participants:
- build up their confidence within their desired role to take on new challenges and pursue employment
- upskill with guidance from mentors who are experts in their fields
- explore other roles and phases of product development, as deploy(impact) uses the Agile methodology where all roles influence the products development from project requirements to proof of concept
- can see their project implemented within organizations of global reach (like Wikimedia CH)
- can include their acquired project experience in their CV and portfolios, increasing their chances to be called to a job interview
deploy(impact)’s team
Behind deploy(impact) 2022 there is a team of passionate and highly skilled professionals without whom it wouldn’t have been possible to make this initiative happen.
We would like to thank:
- mentors and sponsors: Accenture, Aiven, Microsoft, Migros, Constructor Learning, Thomson Reuters and Wikimedia CH,
- deploy(impact) tech leads, program support and core team (women++): Christopher Gwilliams, Giada Fallo, Luisa Contreras, Namrata Gurung, PhD., Maria Luisa Diaz Bedregal (Malu), Suntka Rinke.
- team satellites: Alexandra Bødtker, Beatrice Neacsu, Renu Y. Simek, Simo Paraschi, Amy Bellis, Gilda Fernandez Concha, Heba Hussein, Maria Giakoumelou and Siyana Gurova,
- jury members: Ilario Valdelli, Jennifer Duchetta, Jyotsna Budideti, Mathias Keller and Franziska Schait,
- and last but not least, the full women++ team of volunteers.
Stay tuned for the implementation of this project by Wikimedia CH, once decided which features from each solution created by 4 teams during deploy(impact) 2022 will be implemented.
About the author:
Elisangela Merlin is the Social Media Marketing Manager Volunteer, specializing in Digital Marketing with a background in E-commerce and the startup ecosystems. She believes that education is the most empowering force in the world, as it builds up confidence, brings down barriers, and opens opportunities to forge a better future for society. When not immersed in the social media world, Eli loves to spend time with her kids, cooking (mainly Brazilian food), going for long runs, and getting it all out in a CrossFit WOD.
Visit our website: https://www.womenplusplus.ch/
