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Welcome to the latest wikiHaus Lab update! Here’s what’s happening for Feb 23rd:

:rocket: What’s happening?We have a new experiment on some of our tech articles! We have around 800 tech articles that have a new ‘skin’ on them just like with our relationship skin. They’re still wikiHow articles, but we have the different color scheme and feel on the likes of How to Create a Random Sample in Excel (with Pictures) - wikiHow . What do you think? Do you like it?

:rocket: What’s happening?Polls and quizzes. The team is testing adding one-click polls and banners that lead to quizzes on a small selection of articles. So far they’re both getting great engagement! You can see an example of a poll here (logged out): How to Talk to Anyone: 13 Steps (with Pictures) - wikiHow

:rocket: What’s happening?Promoting our courses. We’re testing out banners at the bottom of some articles to advertise specific courses. For example, showing an ad for our anxiety course on articles that are related to anxiety. So far, these are not actually getting much engagement.

:rocket: What’s happening?Android updates. We’ve been making major improvements to the Android app, and we have a new update that is slowly rolling out.

We’re putting a lot of focus on increasing engagement on our article pages at the moment and are always open to new ideas, so let us know if anything comes to mind:slight_smile:

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I like the new format of the tech articles. I think that the color scheme works well. But I hope you don’t mind if I mention some small issues that I found.

The first issue is that the pop-up box that comes up when you click on the “Helpful?” link that appears when you hover over an image still uses the old color scheme. The “Flag as…” box in Community Q&A does has the same issue as well, along with the print dialog box.

In the right side bar, when you hover over “Random Article” and “Write an Article” under the article information box, the text becomes unreadable due to the color change. And in Community Q&A, if you go to answer a question, and then change your mind and go to click “Cancel”, it has the same issue where the text in it becomes unreadable.

And these are two extremely minor things, but the play/pause button on the changes to patrol widget on the right side still kind of uses the old color scheme because when you hover over it, it turns green. And the “Admin” drop down box also still uses the old color scheme as well. But these two are extremely minor.

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Thanks for the feedback @R2_d2000 , I’ll pass this on!

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I like the polls/quizzes example that you provided. That seems like a great low-pressure way to increase engagement!

I’m neutral on the tech theme. I think it looks good, but I also think the standard design looks good. The big difference seems to be the additional emphasis on the “Tech Help” button. I’d be curious to know how readers respond (e.g. how long they stay on the page) with the new blue design versus the old design to see if there’s any material difference.

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