Planning for Localization with User Interface Designers

Work with UI/UX Designers on Localization at Design phase

As a localization project manager, proactively getting involved in the User Interface (UI) design stage is crucial. Early involvement can significantly reduce overall costs and time by ensuring the UI design team creates a globally accepted interface from the project’s inception.

Where to Find the UX Team

There are two primary UX team structures:

Centralized UX Team: This structure has all UX professionals grouped under one department, providing a consistent user experience across all products. The localization project managers can reach out to UX lead to connect with UX team members.

Decentralized UX Team: Here, UX professionals are embedded within different product teams, allowing for more specialized and focused design efforts tailored to specific products. The localization project managers can reach out to product managers or product team to connect with UX designers.

Who Should Be Involved

A UX team typically includes several key roles:

UX Lead: Oversees the entire UX process, ensuring alignment with business objectives and user needs.

Product Designer: Focuses on the overall design and functionality of the product, balancing user experience with technical feasibility.

UI Designer: Specializes in the visual aspects of the user interface, including layout, color schemes, and typography.

Creative (Visual) Designer: Producing art to promote a company or specific services and products.

Content Strategist (UX Writer): Develops and manages the content within the UI, ensuring it is clear, concise, and user-friendly.

UX Researcher: Conducts user research to gather insights and inform design decisions, ensuring the product meets user needs.

UX Engineer (Front-End Developer): Translates design concepts into functional code, bridging the gap between design and development.

All these roles should be involved in internationalization (i18n) efforts to ensure a seamless global user experience.

When to Involve

According to Google’s UX Design course, a design sprint is categorized into the following stages: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test. During the prototype stage, UI/UX designers create wireframes and prototypes using tools like Figma and Adobe XD. When the UI team develops Low-Fidelity Prototypes, the project manager can start providing insights on potential i18n issues. This allows the UI team to incorporate i18n feedback when creating High-Fidelity Prototypes. The goal is to eliminate i18n issues as early as possible, preventing the need for revisions later in the process. Additionally, the project manager should promote i18n awareness among designers and engineers in their daily work.

How to Get Involved in the UX Design Process

Creating and Maintaining UX Localization Guidelines: Collaborate with the UX team to develop and update guidelines that ensure localization considerations are integrated into the design process.

Regular Brown Bag Sessions: Hold informal meetings with the UX team to understand their needs and gather feedback.

Incorporate Localizability Checks into Testing: Ensure that localizability is part of the testing stage to catch potential issues early.

Data-Driven Approach: Use metrics to demonstrate the benefits of implementing UX localization guidelines and localizability checks, such as time and budget savings.

By following these steps, localization project managers can effectively collaborate with UI designers to create globally accepted products from the outset.