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-l...

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