Kym Pagel - Blog 3

The website was Wikipedia.
To study the users of this site I think it would be best to use the survey technique. I know, it seems like the easy way out, using surveys, but it's actually one of the few ways listed that I think would be helpful considering the broad amount of users who regularly frequent Wikipedia. It would be hard to shadow or do contextual inquiry because the users come from many different cultural and educational backgrounds.
So, survey technique.
Why do surveys? Because they're quick and they can reach a broad range of people without actually having to "go" anywhere. Also, surveys are pretty cheap. You can make them on a site called SurveyMonkey for free. With a technique like this on such a high traffic site its likely that it will be answered a fair amount, especially if some incentive is offered. An example incentive would be if the survey completion was an entry in a drawing for some Wikipedia swag or other moderately priced item.To further increase the likelihood that the surveys will be completed successfully, the survey will be short and with easy to answer questions.
It's possible to have the survey placed at the entrance of each language from the main page, thus getting a little bit from each of the different languages. The questions can help you learn many things, like which countries visit the most, how users enter the site (through the homepage, search bar, etc), and how often they use the site. This will help the designer know which features of the website are most important, for example which languages to emphasize on the main page.