Earlier this year the team at Wikia started down the path to redesign their product - a popular wiki hosting platform. Over the summer they brought me on the project as an interaction and visual designer. And just last month we let the redesign loose to a passionate community of select users. Our redesign effort concentrated on making the experience of using a wiki, where a community of users contribute the content, easier. It’s still too early to judge if we accomplished our goal of attracting a larger audience, helping them discover content, and engaging them as editors. However, after a couple weeks, the reactions that we are getting from users are encouraging and we’re excited to continue improving the site.

Credit for this redesign goes to a large number of people, all of whom put forth a great deal of effort. The group consisted of multiple designers, engineers, product managers and a community relations team, split between San Francisco and Poznan, Poland, where Wikia also has offices. These talented folks turned out an impressive product and for me, were a joy to work with. You’ll find a few screenshots from the design below. But I encourage you to take a look at the real thing on Wikia.com. There are over 160,000 wikis with subjects as diverse as food, popular TV shows, and even tractors. Who knows - you may find a community of people busy writing about your shared passions, and it just may encourage you to get involved.