<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><crossposted from <a href="mailto:activity-stream@mozilla.com" class="">activity-stream@mozilla.com</a> by request><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Hi Folks,<div dir="auto" style="word-wrap: break-word;" class=""><br class=""></div><div dir="auto" style="word-wrap: break-word;" class="">The Activty Stream ‘Zumtela’ milestone ended May 28th. For a complete list of the issues resolved in the iteration: <a href="https://github.com/mozilla/activity-stream/milestone/35?closed=1" target="_blank" class="">https://github.com/<wbr class="">mozilla/activity-stream/<wbr class="">milestone/35?closed=1</a></div><div dir="auto" style="word-wrap: break-word;" class="">Our new iteration, 'Apocalypse Now' is running through June 11th <a href="https://github.com/mozilla/activity-stream/milestone/36" target="_blank" class="">https://github.com/mozilla/<wbr class="">activity-stream/milestone/36</a></div><div dir="auto" style="word-wrap: break-word;" class=""><br class=""></div><div dir="auto" style="word-wrap: break-word;" class="">To get the latest dev edition of <b class="">Activity Stream for Test Pilot</b> (1.13.0): <a href="https://moz-activity-streams-dev.s3.amazonaws.com/dist/latest.html" target="_blank" class="">https://moz-<wbr class="">activity-streams-dev.s3.<wbr class="">amazonaws.com/dist/latest.html</a></div><div dir="auto" style="word-wrap: break-word;" class="">The release version (1.12.0): <a href="https://moz-activity-streams.s3.amazonaws.com/dist/latest.html" target="_blank" class="">https://moz-<wbr class="">activity-streams.s3.amazonaws.<wbr class="">com/dist/latest.html</a></div><div dir="auto" style="word-wrap: break-word;" class="">To 'pref on' the version of <b class="">Activity Stream in Firefox Desktop Nightly</b>, navigate to `<a class="">about:config`</a> and twiddle the pref: <b class="">browser.newtabpage.<wbr class="">activity-stream.enabled</b><br class=""><br class=""><div class="">The Activity Stream engineering team works in two distinct clumps: </div><div class=""><ul class="m_-514065102917309174MailOutline"><li class="">the <b class="">MVP Team</b> is focused on implementing and experimenting with Activity Stream features in our Test Pilot add-on</li><li class="">the <b class="">Graduation Team</b> is landing proven Activity Stream features in Firefox Nightly</li></ul><div class=""><br class=""></div></div><div class=""><div class="">The <b class="">MVP Team</b> has finished and landed the last of the so-called <i class="">customization</i> <wbr class="">features. This allows users to fully customize what sites and what order you see them in the Top Sites section, including the elusive <i class="">drag’n’drop</i> <wbr class="">functionality.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Based on A/B experimentation and User Testing, we have decided to move away from using a single, large (and slightly confusing) Highlights section in Activity Stream, and to replace it with two separate <i class="">Sections</i>: Recent Bookmarks and Visit Again. These are pretty self-explanitory, which was the whole point!</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><img id="m_-514065102917309174E6EFCFA9-D60F-4C66-BDD7-AEC6A14DC79E" apple-inline="yes" width="796" height="620" src="cid:FFEA7185-565F-4ACC-8A9C-64BCD410A41F" class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">The <b class="">MVP Team</b> will be pretty busy implementing and A/B testing these features in the current iteration. <b class="">Ricky Rosario</b>, who has been doing a lot of the amazing UI engineering for the <b class="">MVP Team</b> is being joined by our newest streamer, <b class="">Andrei Oprea</b> who will bring his many talents to bear in helping Ricky get these features landed this iteration.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Our <b class="">Graduation Team </b>has been busy knocking down GitHub tickets in order to get us to a major milestone - preffing on Activity Stream in <b class="">Firefox Nightly</b>! We fully expect that this will happen by the end of this iteration. For those of you who like to track such things, we have a GitHub link for you: <a href="https://github.com/mozilla/activity-stream/issues?q=is:open+is:issue+label:Fx55" target="_blank" class="">https://github.com/mozilla/<wbr class="">activity-stream/issues?q=is%<wbr class="">3Aopen+is%3Aissue+label%3AFx55</a></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">The cool stuff the <b class="">Graduation Team</b> landed in the last iteration include site ‘screenshot’ enhancements that are going to make Activity Stream faster/better and incorporating search box suggestions. <b class="">Fred Lin</b> (@gasolin on GitHub) from the Taipei team that is working on Onboarding and Auto-Migration has submitted their first pull-request to the Activity Stream repo, which we want to loudly applaud and are all really excited about 👍👏🎉. <a href="https://github.com/mozilla/activity-stream/pull/2650" target="_blank" class="">https://github.com/mozilla/<wbr class="">activity-stream/pull/2650</a></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Our <b class="">MVP Team</b> is also responsible for A/B Testing and for building our experimentation and data processing infrastructure. One interesting experiment we have been working on for the past while is integrating <b class="">Pocket</b> into Activity Stream. This takes the form of the Top Stories section in Activity Stream and it looks like:</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><img id="m_-51406510291730917403CA6E79-2B05-493E-9905-F2BDB99757E0" apple-inline="yes" width="786" height="347" src="cid:CF38EB17-1F60-4740-B694-F9A970E3B630" class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">and shows up right after the Search and Top Sites sections. Many kudos to <b class="">Christian Sadilek</b> over on the <b class="">BizDev Team</b> for the great work on landing this feature and hacking on the Activity Stream code base.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">This particular A/B test is to <i class="">enable</i> the Top Stories section for 20% of the Test Pilot population where the control group has the section disabled. We can then compare the Highlights section to Pocket for click-through and block rates to get a quantitative metric for how it is engaging users compared to Highlights. We have a lot of results in re:dash for this experiment. If you have an account, you can take a look at it over here: <a href="https://sql.telemetry.mozilla.org/dashboard/activity-stream-a-b-testing-pocket_1" target="_blank" class="">https://sql.telemetry.<wbr class="">mozilla.org/dashboard/<wbr class="">activity-stream-a-b-testing-<wbr class="">pocket_1</a>, but here are a couple of salient/interesting plots from the study (as of 2017-05-31 22:00EST):</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><img id="m_-514065102917309174C1EC6388-7BCA-4EA9-9860-2BC64290B67E" apple-inline="yes" width="1392" height="376" src="cid:8A910B2A-DF66-4883-AD86-3DB419F8FA01" class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">This result shows that the Pocket recommendations are performing really well in the Test Pilot audience. Click rates are comparatively and significantly high for Pocket recommendations. This result is re-enforced by lower <i class="">block</i> rates for Pocket recommendations as well. </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Results like this, combined with follow-up <b class="">User Research Team</b> studies, like the diary study that <b class="">Jennifer Davidson</b> is currently running (<a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Jv83ARiECBL_dNUpvjsePuqgQYxcKdXVE5afFhayTnI/edit#" target="_blank" class="">https://docs.google.com/<wbr class="">document/d/1Jv83ARiECBL_<wbr class="">dNUpvjsePuqgQYxcKdXVE5afFhayTn<wbr class="">I/edit#</a>), give us confidence that the features we are developing are more likely to lead to positive and engaging user experiences on <a class="">about:newtab</a> and <a class="">about:home</a>.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Thanks!</div><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888" class=""><div class="">Tim Spurway</div><div class="">Engineering Manager, Desktop Streamer</div></font></span></div></div></div></body></html>