The Athena Project: being bold
- Brandon Harris is the senior designer at the Wikimedia Foundation. The views expressed are those of the author only; responses and critical commentary are invited in the comments section.
- The Signpost welcomes proposals for op-eds at our opinion desk.
As Senior Designer of the Wikimedia Foundation, it's part of my job to stimulate conversation about the future of Wikimedia's user experiences. This op-ed is first and foremost intended to do so, although it's not an exact roadmap with deliverables and deadlines. If you'd like to see our goals for the year, please take a look at the 2012–13 goals.
At this year's Wikimania, I gave a talk entitled The Athena Project: Wikipedia in 2015 (slides). The talk broadly outlined several ideas the foundation is exploring for planned features, user interface changes, and workflow improvements. We expect that many of these changes will be welcomed, while others will be controversial.
During the question-and-answer period, I was asked whether people should think of Athena as a skin, a project, or something else. I responded, "You should think of Athena as a kick in the head" – because that's exactly what it's supposed to be: a radical and bold re-examination of some of our sacred cows when it comes to the interface.