Vision
Knowledge for the next billion users
Wikipedia is the world’s go-to online encyclopaedia. In 2019, they wanted to reach regional readers coming online for the first time through their phones. They chose India, the land of languages, to learn how they could capture readers across the world.
challenge
No content = no readers
No readers = no content
Wikipedia’s content is created by volunteers or Wikipedians. Since there were no regional language Wikipedians, there was no regional language content. And because there was no regional language content, there were no readers.
We had to solve 2 problems
01
Make Wikipedia’s content engaging for readers
02
Make translation into regional languages easier
Since new readers enjoyed TikTok and Instagram, we created a sample Wiki page with a mix of rich media and long form content. Through user research, we found that readers spent 90% of total time on the page on rich media content.
outcome
2 in 1: Easy to read & easy to translate
Facts in the form of rich media engaged readers and made them stop and read. In addition, translation of short facts into multiple languages was easier than translating the complete Wiki article.
Testing at
a national stage
100+
articles
Around the 2019 Cricket World Cup, we launched a microsite in three languages with articles in the visually rich format. We tested if rich media content would engage readers, at scale.
5000+
participants
We measured reader engagement and comprehension through quizzes, views, clicks and time spent on the platform. The result was overwhelmingly positive — users answered the quiz correctly and spent time reading multiple articles in one session.
From India to
the World
The New Readers product team evolved into Inuka, where insights from our work are still helping deliver mobile-first, multilingual products for emerging markets.