MAIN HABITS
CATEGORY
PROJECT NAME
MAIN HABITS
TOOLS
CDMX, Mexico
Year
2024
Credits
Images generated with AI
ABOUT THE FROJECT
Alba, a boutique hotel inspired by minimalism and natural beauty, trusted me to craft a timeless visual identity. I designed a custom logo, signage system, branded touchpoints throughout the hotel, and a full brand guidelines book to ensure a cohesive guest experience.
I conducted a competitive analysis of Apple Translate, Google Translate, and Youdao Dictionary, which showed that while some apps excel in speed and simplicity, others offer stronger learning features but at the cost of usability. These insights highlighted an opportunity to design a translator that balances efficiency, clarity, and meaningful language learning.
To better understand user needs and behaviors, I conducted interviews with 4 participants who regularly use translation tools for both everyday and technical purposes. The research shows that while users rely on these tools for quick understanding, they also value accuracy, meaning, and real-world usability—areas where current apps often fall short by focusing primarily on direct translation.
Key Pain Points from interview
1.Accuracy and natural languages are the biggest pain points
All participants highlighted issues with incorrect, unnatural translations. This becomes a bigger problem with multi-meaning words or complex and technical content.
2.Lack of context
Across all interviews, users struggled with translations that lacked context, especially in real world scenarios like menus, signs or work documents. Without context, users often had to guess meaning.
3.Users don’t trust the results
Participants expressed frustration that apps present translations even when incorrect. And forces users to double check results.
4.Example sentences are essential for learning
All participants think of example sentences as a way to understand how words are used in real situations.
5.Camera translations is very useful but has UX issues
Users appreciate photo translation or documents but report messy layouts which reduces usability. Some user bring it that that want to add AI feature into translation
I create a persona to help me remember key goals and frustrations.
After conducting user interviews and competitive analysis,
I synthesized my findings using affinity mapping to group
recurring themes such as accuracy issues, lack of context,
trust concerns, and learning needs.
I also mapped out user goals, business goals, and common goals to align the product direction, and developed problem statements and “How Might We” questions to guide ideation. From these insights, I prioritized features that address the most critical pain points, including accurate and natural translations, contextual definitions, example sentences, tone adjustments, and improved camera translation usability.
Problem Statements
Modern translation apps primarily rely on direct translation, which often fail on natural languages, tone and real-world usage. This creates challenges for users who need to understand languages in everyday or professional situations. User lost trust during the process.
How might we provide natural sounding translations that help users feel confident using or understanding languages in different tones?
Current translation tools focus on providing quick word or sentence outputs but lack deeper explanations or examples. Users who want to learn more such as understanding how to use words correctly in sentences.
How might we help users not only translate but also understand and learn more about how language is used for education purposes.
Our User Flows shows an understanding
of the Translator Flow and Camera Translation Flow works.
The Sitemap maps out the core functional requirements of a translation tool
I Started with lo-fi wireframes to start the structure of the core flow and ensure I had enough screens to test end-to-end.
My key screen were: translate a sentence or text, open camera to translate a picture
Select word with
pop-up box
Throughout our research and definition process, I also worked on establishing the look and feel for this translator APP.
We did this by creating a moodboard and wanted to feel clean + clear.
on white
on dark
We landed on this logo because the integration of the speech bubble and a book is a clever and highly effective way to communicate both conversation and education needs. It perfectly mirrors the brand name.
From there, we developed this color palette to create strong visual contrast, improve readability, and ensure accessibility across different use cases. The combination of high-contrast colors and clear, easy-to-read typography helps users quickly scan information and focus on key translation content without visual strain.
Before creating my high-fidelity wireframes, I explored using the AI tool Stitch to help accelerate my design process. I uploaded my low-fidelity wireframes along with branding elements and provided a short prompt describing the visual style and experience I wanted to achieve. While the tool generated results quickly and offered a convenient starting point, the outputs did not fully align with my design vision and included some inconsistencies. I found that manually designing allowed me to have more control and precision over the final outcome. However, Stitch was still a valuable resource during moments of creative block, as it provided inspiration and alternative layout ideas that helped inform my design direction.
I tested my low-fidelity wireframes with users to evaluate both the product concept and overall design. Based on their feedback, I iterated on the translate page multiple times, refining the experience through each round. This collaborative process helped guide design decisions and ultimately led to the final high-fidelity UI.
I test usability testing with 4 participants to evaluate the overall navigation, feature and clarity of the translation app.
Participants were able to complete all core tasks successfully.
Positive results
Participants responded positively to key features in the app. All participants were able to quickly find and understand the tone feature, and they also reacted positively to the word pop-up feature, describing it as unique and useful.
Following usability testing of my translation app, I gathered all feedback and created a prioritization to evaluate and rank the feedback received. I focused on identifying improvements that would have the greatest impact on usability with minimal effort, such as simplifying the translation flow on homescreen and improving feature clarity. These iterations allowed me to refine the experience efficiently while building on the existing design.