Wikimedia Product/Perspectives/Experience/Form Factor

Summary
One significant challenge in making all the world’s knowledge accessible to all the world’s people will be to ensure that Knowledge is optimized and future-proofed for a rapidly-evolving digital consumption environment.

The term Form Factor generally refers to the various entry points, devices, channels and formats that define a digital product offering. In the context of Wikimedia, form factor will include (a) the variety of devices that Wikimedia content can show up on now and in the future; (b) the size, and flexibility of the content itself. Such explicit form factor considerations are the main focus of this paper, however, other implicit aspects of form factor must be considered as well. Partnerships, for example, may require Wikimedia content to be adapted to, or deeply integrated into, third party products with assistance and guidance from the makers of those products - and several of the explicit considerations suggest this type of partnership. Likewise, ideas like making Wikimedia content available as a utility, or layer on top of the Internet, are another implicit example of form factor explored in some of the concepts described in the paper.

Resources
Adobe Inc., 2018 Consumer Content Survey (US) https://www.slideshare.net/adobe/2018-adobe-consumer-content-survey

Reuters and University of Oxford, 2018 Digital News Report http://www.digitalnewsreport.org/

T. Connelly, 2017 Future of Mobile Apps Looking Bleak https://www.thedrum.com/news/2017/02/27/future-mobile-apps-looking-bleak

A. Kalogeropoulos, 2018 The Rise of Messaging Apps for News http://www.digitalnewsreport.org/survey/2018/the-rise-of-messaging-apps-for-news

D. Harvey, 2011 The Future of the Commons https://davidharvey.org/media/Harvey_on_the_Commons.pdf