Wikimedia Foundation's Senior Designer, Brandon Harris, had a lot of insightful, interesting feedback[1] regarding the 'redesign,' (of which I happen to agree with):
-It's completely impractical and does not take into account some of the most basic ideas that Wikipedia is and depends upon. I don't think it's very well thought out or researched, and serves mostly as a hypothetical portfolio
piece for a design firm.
For example, the fact that Wikipedia is available in multiple languages is quite possibly its most important feature. The idea of burying language selection within an incomprehensible color band (that will only work on non-touch devices) boggles my mind.
- Many, many important principles are tossed away. Why do the designers change the meaning of the "history" button? Burying the revision history is counter to all things that wikis stand for.
- Research into the Foundation projects would tell you that storing a user's browsing history is against the privacy policy - so why include that?
- > "Sharing functions will be the same so no change is necessary" - except that there are no sharing functions.
- The most basic principle of product design is "Know the product," and these designers do not.
And finally,
This is to say nothing of the exercise in 'brand manipulation.' The most powerful brand that Wikipedia has is the wordmark itself ("wikipedia"), followed by the distinctive "W" logo (crossed "v" characters), followed by a single puzzle piece, followed by the puzzle globe. The brand rework here throws ALL of these things away and replaces them with a stylized "w" glyph that is almost but not quite exactly like the logo used by Wordpress."
-It's completely impractical and does not take into account some of the most basic ideas that Wikipedia is and depends upon. I don't think it's very well thought out or researched, and serves mostly as a hypothetical portfolio piece for a design firm.
For example, the fact that Wikipedia is available in multiple languages is quite possibly its most important feature. The idea of burying language selection within an incomprehensible color band (that will only work on non-touch devices) boggles my mind.
- Many, many important principles are tossed away. Why do the designers change the meaning of the "history" button? Burying the revision history is counter to all things that wikis stand for.
- Research into the Foundation projects would tell you that storing a user's browsing history is against the privacy policy - so why include that?
- > "Sharing functions will be the same so no change is necessary" - except that there are no sharing functions.
- The most basic principle of product design is "Know the product," and these designers do not.
And finally,
This is to say nothing of the exercise in 'brand manipulation.' The most powerful brand that Wikipedia has is the wordmark itself ("wikipedia"), followed by the distinctive "W" logo (crossed "v" characters), followed by a single puzzle piece, followed by the puzzle globe. The brand rework here throws ALL of these things away and replaces them with a stylized "w" glyph that is almost but not quite exactly like the logo used by Wordpress."
But that's just my opinion"
"If you want to have an idea of what the Wikimedia Foundation is thinking with regards to the future of Wikipedia, you'd be better served by reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/20...
[1] Brandon full response to the design: http://www.quora.com/Wikipedia/Wikipedia-What-does-the-Wikip...