Branded Language Translator
Overview
Project Summary
Using Natural Language Processing, we built a product to translate any text into branded corporate language of a company. The translator aims to make communication towards customers or business partner more consistent while reducing workload of editorial writers and marketing.
Disclaimer: as this project was developed under NDA, I am showing simplified designs I custom made for this showcase.
Team Setup
Lead Product Designer
Product Owner
2 Frontend Devs
Data Scientist
Data Engineer
Agile Coach
1 Backend Dev
Solution Architect
Company & Industry
Vodafone Center of Excellence AI
Telecommuncation Industry
Design Sneak Peek
My Role & Contribution
My Role within the Team
As Sole Product Designer for this AI powered project, I led the design process from research to implementation. Working within a cross-functional team of developers, data scientists and product stakeholders I ensured our solution addressed real user needs while aligning with business objectives.
Research & Discovery
Design of a comprehensive research plan
Conducted stakeholder interviews
Synthesized research findings into clear opportunity areas
Identified workflow inefficiencies across content creation processes
Mapped enterprise content ecosystem to identify integration points
Design & Testing
Led and executed the design in close collaboration with PO, Devs and Data Engineers
Sketched and prototyped ideas to understand user requirements more deeply, explore further opportunities and reduce development efforts
Ran usability tests to validate core flows like text input, translation or onboarding and refined interactions such as loading state
Designed interactions for tone previews, rewrite suggestions, and user feedback
Implementation & Iteration
Collaborated proactively with developers through short feedback cycles and by providing user flow diagrams and up-to-date design assets
Designed the MVP focused on primary user needs and business goals
Conducted QA testing to ensure design fidelity
Iterated on features based on user feedback and analytics
Strategic Design Leadership
Transformed business requirements into actionable design strategy
Established design processes that enhanced cross-functional collaboration
Defined success metrics aligned with business objectives
Developed scalable design system for enterprise-level implementation
Created roadmap for feature development and product evolution
Mentored 2 working students during this project
Challenges & Objectives
For the telecommunications industry (in Germany) a strong branding is crucial to succeed against competitors. This is something you can observe by e.g. the always present billboards or expensive TV-Ads. Working within product development as well as in marketing or legal, we identified three core problems:
Business Challenges & Objectives
User Challenges & Objectives
Design Strategy & Vision
Our vision was to empower every employee within the company to communicate confidently and consistently in our distinct brand voice, transforming the translator from a simple tool into an indispensable asset for brand integrity and operational efficiency.
Stategic Key Pillars
Prioritise Seamless Workflow Integration & Efficiency
Goal: Address the core user pain point which is the bottleneck and workload associated with manual editorial checks.
Approach: We mapped existing content creation and approval workflows across different roles such as Marketing, Product, Legal. Our design strategy prioritised integrating the translator naturally into these workflows, rather than creating a separate, disruptive step. This meant exploring integrations and designing an intuitive standalone interface for ad-hoc use. This also led to for example integrating a branding score in our product that was part of a standalone application before. The focus was on minimising context switching and delivering savings for users.
Build Trust Through Transparency and Control
Goal: Encourage adoption and reliance on an AI-driven tool, especially for critical communications.
Approach: Users, especially Legal or Marketing, might be hesitant to trust Natural Language Processing completely. This is why I thought it was important to focus our strategy on transparency. The design needed to clearly indicate what changes were made and why, linking back to brand guidelines where possible.
Ensure Scalability and Adaptability for Brand Complexity
Goal: Create a robust solution that could handle the nuances of the main brand and accommodate sub-brands with distinct tones.
Approach: The design strategy required a system architecture that could manage multiple brand voice profiles. This involved designing clear ways for users to select the appropriate profile and for administrators, in our case the editorial writers and responsible roles in sub brands, to manage and refine these profiles. We aimed for a flexible design that could potentially incorporate new brands or evolving guidelines without a complete overhaul.
Define and Measure Success Holistically
Goal: Ensure the design work delivered tangible value to users and the business.
Approach: Our strategy was not just about shipping features. It was about noticeable and measurable impact. The key metrics we identified were:
Efficiency: Reduction in editorial review time, faster content production cycles
Consistency: Measurable increase in adherence to brand voice guidelines. We could track this using an API integrated application that measures copy brand fit in addition to qualitative and quantitative research
User Satisfaction: Adoption rates, task completion success, qualitative feedback
User Research
My Role as Lead Product Designer
What my role in the team was here…
My Key Contributions
Stakeholder Interviews
User Research
Lo- & HiFi Designs
User Testing & QA
Feature Prioritization
KPI Definition & Refinement
Market & Competitor Research
Roadmap Planning
Vision Crafting
Team Setup
Lead Product Designer
Product Owner
2 Frontend Devs
Data Scientist
Data Engineer
Agile Coach
1 Backend Dev
Solution Architect
Users across various departments reported saving circa 30% to 60% of their time compared to manually writing branded texts
Users felt more confident sending out copy using the translator without the extra step of checking in with the branding editorial team
Feedback showed that users trusted their translated texts and felt they were aligned with company guidelines helping them focus more on the content
For high-impact communication a check in with branding was still needed but even in those cases the translator saved time for both sides
The translated texts were compliant with the official branding rules in almost all cases
While here and there mistakes and bugs occurred, safety features like the compliance ranking helped users identify errors before sending those texts out
For departments and sub-companies with own distinct branding guidelines, a customised ruleset can be integrated
Users utilised the translator in way more use cases than we anticipated
The translator was reportedly used for all kinds of communication from basic emails to website copy or job postings
Various departments approached us with feature requests for their individual use cases which helped us identify optimal next steps and opened up opportunities
This helped immensely with securing a backing of important stakeholders for the products future
Working with AI, I learned how to give users just enough control while letting the product do the heavy lifting and how important it is to make every suggestion feel transparent and helpful.
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2025 Maxim Barwinkewitsch
