Background
ROLE
Content Designer
DATE
July 2022 - Sep 2022
PROJECT STATUS
🚀 Launched
FEATURE TEAM
Phoebe (designer), Jingwen Tan(PM), Peipei Wang (designer) and a engineering team of 8 members
HONOR is a top manufacturer of smart devices in China, selling over 10 million smart devices annually, including smartphones, tablets, laptops, and wearable devices.
I joined HONOR in January 2022 as a Content Designer in the Globalization Team and part of my responsibility is optimizing workflows and work tools for our team.
My first project was designing an all-in-one platform for ticket submission & tracking for the language translation team. In the project, I collaborated closely with the UX team in defining design priorities, and was deeply involved in the design of interactive prototypes.
Identify Problems
Unproductive Translation Workflow
Smartphone UX content localization is an essential business line for HONOR to expand global reach and improve user experience. At HONOR, the smartphone UI copies submitted from different business lines are proofread and translated by my UX writing team from Chinese to English, then into other 70+ languages by third-party localization providers.
Everyday, my UX writing team has to communicate repeatedly with all stakeholders who submit UI translation tickets to us. However, during the cross-functional process, my team frequently received complaints about our late delivery, inaccurate translation, inconsistent UX terminology externally, and excessive workload, unqualified ticket submission, time-consuming communication internally.
Time-consuming cross-functional communication & complaints
How might we resolve the complaints by optimizing current workflow for all stakeholders?
User
Research
My team decided to address this issue, and I participated as the product designer for the project. The first thing I did was clarifying problems through user research. I conducted 10+ stakeholder interviews and spent a week on user observation. Through these methods, I deeply understood the roles of all stakeholders and their collaboration methods within the workflow.
From the stakeholder map, we can see that the entire UX content translation is a collaborative process centered around UX writers. Key stakeholders include upstream UX designers and SDEs, as well as downstream language QC. A typical UI translation process looks like this:
Insights
From my research, I identified multiple issues in the current workflow that caused the complaints. The issues could be categorized in the following aspects:
Communication Between Roles Is Insufficient and Ineffective
We lacked tools to automatically intercept unqualified tickets: After receiving the ticket materials, PAs needed to manually check each one and repeatedly communicate with each submitter clarifying submission rules. This process was highly inefficient and time-consuming.
When a new ticket started, the downstream roles did not receive notifications. Because of the lack of task notification, PAs needed to remind them personally multiple times.
Absence of Critical UI Assets
Translators lacked translation memory databases and UI terminology, leading to inconsistency in UI copy style and localization.
Lack of Personnel Training
Developers lacked basic English literacy when writing codes and UX writers did not have writing guides to ensure stylistic consistency.
The UI writing style guide was never shared with upstream & downstream stakeholders, preventing them from performing quality control.
Ticket submitters don't know submission rules, leading to unnecessary re-edits and time-consuming education.
Lack of Workload Visualization
The workload of each stakeholders wasn't visualized, making it hard for supervisors to evaluate their work performance. I realize that my team needs a Dashboard to better manage projects and personnels.
Design
Goals
After rounds of discussions with designers, developers and brainstorming sessions, we narrowed down our design challenges and set forth a specific design goal:
We also devised a very detailed roadmap. The entire product will be designed and developed in three phases, spanning over three quarters.
Design
Cross-functional collaboration was of the highest priority in my project. Therefore, I proposed to design an all-in-one platform that can accommodate the entire workflow and eliminate stakeholders' communication gaps. Based on the user research, pain points, and stakeholder discussions, we conceptualized the essential features and core functions to develop our MVP. This new platform would significantly improve the communication efficiency and deliverables' quality for all stakeholders.
Dashboard
Task Assignment and Tracking
Task Data Center
Analytics and Reporting
Task Submitting Process
Impacts
After the Nito platform went live, the team gradually migrated the workflow to Nito within a month. After several iterations of feedback collection and design, the Nito platform functions quite well in HONOR's Globalization Team.
Work efficiency has improved for all types of users. Translation accuracy has increased by 40%. Financially, Nito saved HONOR $2 million annually because ticket submitters don't have to pay extra costs for urgent orders thanks to the greatly improved delivery capability.
​
In addition, Nito has become a model ansewer inspiring the Globalization Team to standardize processes and formalize documentation in other workflows.
Email Alerts:
Nito's email alerts function can be used for many other reminder operations.
Wiki Documentation:
This feature can be used to improve training programs for new hires across departments.
Design Documentation:
Documentation can be extended for user retention analysis tool design.
Standardized Process:
The ticket online submission platform can be subsequently applied to the translation of other text types, such as agreements and documents.