Today we are announcing the designs and interactive prototypes for the
Universal Language Selector.
Wikipedia is available in 285 languages, and MediaWiki has been
translated to almost 400 languages.
Several language-related tools are available to support the
consumption and contribution of content in different languages.
These tools allow users to type text in a language for which their
keyboard is not prepared, download appropriate web fonts to display
non-Latin scripts properly and choose the language of their user
interface.
The Universal Language Selector is a tool that will allow users to
select a language and configure its support in an easy way.
When the number of languages in a list approaches 400, ease of use
becomes both a need and a challenge.
The design process for the selector started with the analysis of user
needs and the definition of representative scenarios to support.
Then, we explored different ideas in the form of sketches and
wire-frames through different iterations.
Finally, we have created interactive prototypes to test whether our
ideas work with real users, and we want to share them with the
community.
More information about the designs has been recently published at the
Wikimedia Foundation blog:
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/05/21/introducing-designs-for-the-universal-…
We are announcing the availability of the Universal Language Selector
designs to gather feedback on the proposed solutions, and ask for
volunteers to test our prototypes.
If you want more details on the designs or want to have ideas for
improvement or criticism on the designs, feel free to do so on the
talk page for the Universal Language Selector:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Universal_Language_Selector#Proposed_design
If you are a speaker of Arabic, Dutch, Hebrew or Hindi, you can also
request participation for the usability tests at
http://goo.gl/QpWmu
In less than 30 minutes you can participate in the tests and
experience whether our proposed solutions work in practice for your
specific language community and context.
Pau
--
Pau Giner
Interaction Designer
Wikimedia Foundation