Wikipedia Mobile Interface

Wikipedia is the 7th most visited website in the world. It runs on donations and volunteer labor. The mobile interface redesign rolled out in 2023 is the clearest example I know of a non-profit making design decisions that prioritize reading over engagement. The new layout has wider margins, a cleaner typeface, a sticky table of contents that collapses into a sidebar, and a search bar that stays accessible at the top of every article. The old mobile site felt like reading a desktop page on a phone, with text running edge to edge and section headers blurring together. The redesign fixed those problems without adding any of the distractions commercial sites use to keep you scrolling. No ads, no recommended articles, no comments, no notifications. Every absent feature is a design decision that respects the reader's attention. The Foundation spent years testing the new interface with readers across languages and regions before rolling it out. Patience is rare for any organization and almost unheard of for a nonprofit. The mobile app adds offline article saving and a dark mode that works well for late-night reading. Those 2 features cover about 90% of what I want from a reference app. However, the editing interface on mobile is still clunky enough that most contributions happen on desktop. Closing that gap would bring in a generation of editors who've never used a computer to write anything longer than a text message. Wikipedia proves that the best design for a reading experience is the one that removes everything except the text.