Codex for Wikipedia Android Apps (Thoughts on using it for Commons App)

[gopalakrishnaa]

What is the user problem or growth opportunity you want to see solved?

Wikimedia Foundation, Wikimedia Deutschland, and the volunteer community are working on new design principles for Codex. (https://doc.wikimedia.org/codex/latest/)
The Wikimedia Foundation is also working on Codex for the Wikipedia Android App. Using these design principles, style guides and other guidelines, we can also work on the Wikimedia Commons App. This will help to revamp the UI and UX experience of Commons App for Android. Let us start a conversation on this thread how we can use these here. (https://doc.wikimedia.org/codex/latest/style-guide/wikipedia-apps.html)

How do you know that this problem exists today? Why is this important?

At present, I am hearing most of the users' opinions as the App looks outdated and not really user-friendly.

Who will benefit from it?

Mobile-first users, Commons contributors from Android App

Anything else you would like to add?

No response

[RitikaPahwa4444]

Ideally we should use the design system Wikimedia uses. It gives a consistent look and feel throughout. No doubt the users complain about the outdated UI.

However, a few concerns at the top of my mind:

1. Refactoring and then doing the sanity is a huge task. A design system is a lot more simpler to implement using Jetpack compose, but we aren't there yet. Assume this to take 6+ months even with dedicated effort.
2. Just refactoring it won't suffice. We'll need dedicated designers to work on Figma prototypes.
3. Compatibility with our codebase - I skimmed a bit; it's not Kotlin or Java code that we could integrate directly. Wikipedia uses a script to convert it into compose colors that we cannot use as is. We'll have to generate XML code until we migrate to compose.
4. We've users from many regions and across all age groups. Not everyone likes a sudden change in the UI/UX. We try to avoid abrupt changes.

Points 1 and 2 are a bit hard to achieve with volunteers within a few months or even a dedicated season of GSoC. I would probably even avoid a complete refactoring project for a GSoC edition. @gopalakrishnaa is there a plan to pick this up as part of your grant?