The on-wiki version of this newsletter is here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Updates/2021-04-21
We are very happy to announce that we have been joined by Aishwarya
Vardhana and Carolyn Li-Madeo. Aishwarya will join the team permanently,
and Carolyn will support us over the course of the next few weeks. They are
both exceptional UX designers and we are very much looking forward to
working with them.
I'll let them both introduce themselves with their own words:
Aishwarya:
Hello and namaste everyone! My name is Aishwarya (she/her). I am so happy
to be joining the AW team to assist their efforts towards building a deeply
multilingual and multicultural Wikipedia. I grew up in a household
committed to preserving indigenous knowledge through art, culture, and oral
tradition. At a young age I read about the anticolonial teachings of
Mahatma Gandhi and Dalit activist B.R. Ambedkar, and I believe this was the
origins of my interest in knowledge production and knowledge equity. I
studied Art and Art History and Product Design at Stanford University where
I was an organizer for Black Lives Matter. I recently finished a 10 week
course on an Indigenous Study Guide to Abolition at the Yellowhead
Institute, found it revelatory, and have been thinking a lot about
decolonizing systems! In this vein, I am invested in creating more
connectivity between the worlds of technology, design, and social
movements. I like to write about decolonizing design here
<https://aishwaryavardhana.medium.com/>. I look forward to building with
all of you. Favorite Wikipedia page: Critical Pedagogy
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_pedagogy>
Carolyn:
Hi! My name is Carolyn (she/her) and I’m excited to be supporting Aishwarya
and the Abstract Wikipedia team for the next 6 weeks. I like to work on
projects that empower people to question, learn and explore in new ways. In
a previous life I was a reference librarian at a commuter college in my
beautiful hometown of Brooklyn, NY, which is where I became passionate
about free and usable access to knowledge via the internet. For the past
four years I have been the designer of the Wikipedia iOS app, where it’s
been a pleasure to design and refine products for mobile readers and
editors. During my time with the Abstract Wikipedia team I hope to be a
steward of design thinking in partnership with Aishwarya, as well as begin
to develop a modular and human-centered design roadmap for the project. My
favorite Wikipedia list is a List of sundial mottos
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sundial_mottos>, my favorite article
is Women in climate change
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_climate_change>.
We are positively thrilled to have them on board. In the coming weeks, we
will share more about how we think about our UX challenges. We think that
it is crucial for Wikifunctions to be truly accessible and approachable, in
order to achieve our goal of democratizing access to code and functions.
With Aishwarya and Carolyn joining us, we can finally work toward that
piece of the puzzle in order to make Wikifunctions the project it could be.