Mediawiki Prototype #1

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Current way categories are displayed

As you may know, I am redesigning mediawiki (software behind wikipedia) for my thesis to be more user friendly. One of the first things I started to look at was how categories where entered, edited, and used. Because categories are used on every page, I thought it was a little weird that they are entered in the main edit window, and not like tags are handled on many other sites. This issue requires a lot of work from the user because each one needs to be entered as a link with the prefix “Category:” (shown on the right). A second issue I saw was that the user had to know what the categories where named. Because they must be entered with the exact spelling and case, it usually requires that the user open a second window to search for and find the exact name of the category, copy the name and paste it in the original window.

One of my first redesigned parts was to take care of these issues. After several iterations I believe I have come up with a way of working that addresses most of these issues. But to prove its usability, I need to be able to test it with users, so I made an interactive prototype. You should go check it out. Mind you some parts of it are not the best, but it should be near good enough to test out.

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