Based in Singapore, honestbee operates in 8 countries across Asia. We cater a total of 6 languages: English, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Bahasa Indonesia, Thai and Japanese. It’s no easy feat. But by taking a proactive approach in design, we’re able to have our products translated well across the region.

As a Singaporean, I grew up respecting languages. They are our tools of communication that connect us, no matter which social group we’re born into. In this region, we speak a good variety of Asian languages from Mandarin to Malay to Tamil and so forth. But our main form of communication is English. We learn it growing up in school and even speak it as naturally as we do our “mother tongue” at home and outside.

And as a UX writer, understanding how language connects us is a precious lesson in empathy. What’s the point of a beautiful or witty copy if it’s written in a slang that not all our users can understand? It’s more than just writing with correct grammar, it’s truly about using words that people can identify with.

With that in mind, here are some useful tips that I’ve learned over the past two years on how to localise a regional product.

1. Adopt language inclusivity

Be a conscious writer. Use words that doesn’t discriminate or exclude anyone.

No jargons, slang, idioms: These may not always translate well. For example, expressions like “let’s go makan” or “shiok” may be common in Singapore and Malaysia. But other countries don’t understand them. Or if they do, they may not mean the same.

Besides, there are some words that can’t be translated at all. You can find them on UX Writing Hub’s ‘Untranslatable’ project.

Use gender-neutral pronouns: We use the singular ‘they’, instead of ‘he’ or ‘she’.

For a more comprehensive guide on language inclusivity, I recommend reading this blog post by buffer.

2. Use the 30% rule for interface copy

Content and design must always go hand in hand from the start to the end. So just like design, it’s okay to work your copy in drafts. But this also must include translations. For UI copy, content length is important. I use the Hemingway Editor to help me track the character count (also a great site to measure readability!).

Sometimes when translating from English to Bahasa Indonesia, the new content may become about 30% longer. When you consider this in every stage of design, the designer can make the correct button size, for example. In this way, we’re able to display our final content comfortably in all languages.

3. Build a (super) team of content reviewers

There are plenty of translation services out there like Google and Gengo, but no one knows our users as well as we do. Someone has to ensure that the translations don’t get lost in the process and that they make sense to our users.

So we got our colleagues involved to share the responsibility. We also asked those outside the design team to come on board. And boy, were they happy and excited to be part of it! We started out with a team of 7, and in two years, we’ve grown to about 30 members now. Woo!

Conduct an onboarding session: We call up or meet with the content reviewers in person. And also create and share how-to guides on Confluence pages. This ensures that everyone involved understands what to do and how.

Educate on content management tools: We use Google Docs, Google Sheets and Lokalise (a web-based translation management system). This is an organise way of creating and managing content and translations. Then we guide the team on how to use them.

Get local market insights: Not only are they experts in the language, but also in the users’ needs. So they can provide insights from specific markets.

For example, in Singapore, we use “#01–00” as an example of a landed property address on our checkout page. Singaporeans would understand that it’s on the ground floor. But our Hong Kong team member advised that the locals there don’t normally use “#01–00” and thus may not understand it. So we changed it to the more recognised “G/F” for our Hong Kong users.

While both terms essentially mean the same, the countries understand them differently.

4. Have a designated channel of communications

In design, it’s good to open up communications between your team and other teams and keep them open. Similarly for content projects, we consistently allow room for discussion with content reviewers.

Create a designated channel: We create a Slack channel specifically for this purpose. Then we invite the content reviewers and other necessary members like product managers. It’s useful to have a dedicated channel where everyone can easily contribute. People may be more willing to share if they know exactly where to post their thoughts and ideas.

Start off the dialogue: We discuss openly in the channel and always encourage feedback. This helps us gain refreshing new perspectives.

And we ask for feedback regularly, especially in the beginning. At one point, I did wonder if I sound like a broken record. But sending out occasional reminders does help the team in the long run so I don’t stop.

Include them as early as possible in the design process: This always pays, trust me. You don’t want to end up with translated text that runs too long and won’t fit a button. Or a final receipt email that’s worded wrongly.

Lastly, keep the conversation open: Design never ends and neither does content. With new features, content needs updating too.

5. Have a working process and stick to it

Everyone has different working styles, but it’s no excuse not to develop one process that everyone adheres to. This helps to manage project timelines more effectively across the board.

Here’s a typical checklist:

1. Work out the deadlines with the product managers and customer service team.
2. Confirm the required deliverables with them.
3. Let the content reviewers know when they need to finish reviewing the content. Make sure they’re aware of the launch date too.
4. Update everyone as you progress.

And that’s all the tips I’ve got! If you have more, leave a comment below. You can share what works for you and your team and what doesn’t. I’m happy to hear them all.

A UX writer’s guide to localising a regional product was originally published in honestbee design on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Tis the season to be jolly, and what’s not to be thankful for but the people we work with every day?

This is the honestbee experience design team; we are an eclectic bunch based in Singapore and Taiwan and our little corner of the office is never empty of chocolates and munchies.

This year, we decided to celebrate Christmas with a nice dinner buffet and karaoke plus a fun Secret Santa gift exchange. Getting the right gift isn’t always easy, but judging from the smiles, I think we did pretty good.

The team also didn’t forget to include our newest member Mika who recently joined. What’s a better way to welcome her than one of those cute Merlion Chou Chou Mystery Faces plushie? Needless to say, she loved it!

honestbee has had a busy 2018, but we’re only just getting started! Look out for more updates on this blog where we’ll share all the cool and new stuff we’ll be exploring and working on next.

Let’s catch up again soon. Hope you have a Merry Christmas and a happy year! :)

Interested in experience design? We’re hiring! Check out our Careers page or the other positions that honestbee is offering.

Have a very merry UXmas! was originally published in honestbee design on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

There are words that sound like the right thing to say — impressive words, the kind of words a Fortune 500 company would use. And then there are the words that are right for you.

The best and the worst of it can be found on About Us and Careers pages. Mostly because ‘who reads About Us?’ and because a lot of recruiting happens on LinkedIn or a company is convinced they need the same kind of talent as everyone else. They will say things like: ‘The world’s best talent to change the way that people experience the world/create impactful solutions.’ And they know they’ll get said talent on board because: ‘They invest in people, develop future leaders, build diverse teams where creativity flourishes and people have always been their greatest strength. And the best because, if you’ve invested in these pages, it means you really know your own brand.

We started talking about it because we are in the process of revamping our own Careers page (the brainchild of Christina Rios). We used a simple test to work out if we’ve found the ‘right-for-us words’:

If we removed our logo and the company name from our Careers page, would a person be able to guess which company it is?

The good news is that there is a lot of inspiring content out there. The About Us page of Hendrick’s Gin tells the story of ‘Our peculiar past’ and ‘A random act of odd destiny’. Slack emphasises the importance of work-life balance by saying that ‘We work hard and we play to win… within normal business hours. And then we go home.’ MailChimp promises to invest in projects that keep communities ‘weirder and more human’.

Seeing the amazing stuff others are doing can help if you’re feeling like making a shortcut—resorting to “the right words” for the topic at hand (“impact”, “innovation”, “teamwork”), not the “right-for-you words”, and to the usage of one too many idioms. If I ever find myself contemplating writing “blue-sky thinking”, I know it is time to get out of the office, clear my head and do some “out of the box thinking”. Ahem, I better go now…

Of course, there is nothing wrong with wanting to hire ‘world class talent’, but, when evaluating multiple potential employers, that talent will want to know what’s your company’s personality like, what’s special about you. And only the “right-for-you words”, not the “right, impressive words”, can show that.

Creating a Careers page: a simple test to find out if you’re speaking in your brand’s voice was originally published in honestbee design on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I am worried that I am falling in love with a dying art.

On iOS you can enable auto-update for all apps with one convenient little button. Play Store has the auto-update feature automatically enabled when you download an app.

Until very recently I used to be the proud owner of a very old Android phone and can vouch that even that trusty dinosaur attempted to auto-update my apps on its reptilian system, prevented only by the non-existent storage.

App and Play stores give details on how many users have upgraded to your latest version but, to my knowledge, they don’t tell you whether it was done manually or by auto-update.

It’s even hard to argue that app release notes are a good marketing channel for acquiring new users, since they have to scroll and tap to get to see them at all.

So who reads app release notes? One of our iOS developers does only if the size of the download is large to see whether it’s worth it (he’s not on the auto-update wagon). I used to because my reptilian phone meant I had to carefully choose which updates get the coveted storage. And looks like this guy does.

Then why bother to work on something with such seemingly low impact? Maybe the saddest statement in the history of humanity is good enough?

Bug fixes and performance improvements.

I say no to that. The effort required to write a decent app release note is little compared to what you get in return. Because the small group of people who care enough about you, love tech or even just have to read the notes because of an old phone, have the potential to become your biggest fans—evangelists of your product.

Don’t let them down, delight them.

As for our own app release notes, I think we’re still looking for a balance between:

1. Adding enough technical info (minus the jargon) to be truly helpful to people who care about the details. Describing the exact bugs that have been fixed (Slack does this wonderfully) shows that you care about feedback and act on it instead of being dismissive.
2. Clearly stating the benefits of the new version (no vague benefits, please) for people who just want a decent service and don’t care how cleverly you fixed that impossible bug or how sleek your UI is.
3. Highlighting not just what’s new but also what has changed.
4. Giving a helping hand to marketing by including promo codes. We operate in several countries, each running different campaigns, so we have to be careful with this one since release notes can only be customised by language and not by country.
5. Snappy and fun to read vs. informative—it’s easy to get caught up in the storytelling and your own (real or imagined) cleverness.

Who reads app release notes? was originally published in honestbee design on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Couple of weeks ago honestbee was invited as a client to one of Hyper Island’s awesome UX Labs. In the short time span of less than three days, the students had to re-imagine honestbee’s product experience as a future on-demand service.

I joined honestbee 1 year ago. At that time we only delivered groceries. Now we deliver food, medication, home and auto accessories and do your laundry too.

We are re-inventing ourselves faster than other companies can plan a Christmas party, and it’s great!

Moving fast comes with its own challenges—how do we evolve into a future on-demand service and remain true to our core values? This is what we set out to tackle together with Hyper Island.

A part of the answer is knowing your users. And we are no novices when it comes to qualitative and quantitative user research. We use data to justify our design decisions on a daily basis.

By the way, here’s some shameless advertising—we’re organising a design meet-up on the 27th April “Quantifying The User Experience”.

To truly reinvent yourself, user research has to go hand in hand with creativity. You have to listen to your users and then give them something that is 10 times better than what they asked for. Kind of like creating a car and not a faster horse.

What I learnt from working with Hyper Island’s students is the value of looking from the outside in. Seeing honestbee through someone else’s eyes gives a fresh perspective and unbottles creativity.

Let me explain. As employees, we have a good understanding of our operations and the cost of doing business. However, we should always be mindful of not innovating because of practical considerations. At the end of the day, a great idea, a crazy idea, the right crazy idea, is worth more than the resources required to execute it. This is something I learnt from our CEO. It is great to work for a company that encourages creativity!

Time-is-precious Tim

Group members: Hasan, Razalee, Wendy, Cheryl, Nguyen

I really loved how the presenters of the time-is-precious Tim explained the problem they are trying to solve.

When the hypothetical time-is-precious Tim calls his wife to ask her what she wants for dinner, she says “anything”. He is tired from a long day at work and now he has to decipher what his wife means by “anything”. Because, of course, she doesn’t actually mean anything (frog legs anyone?).

This scenario highlights the cost of making everyday decisions.

Food should bring joy, but when you are busy and stressed, the decision-making and effort required to eat well can be too much.

People make better decisions when they are not strapped for time. So it makes sense to spend a little bit of your free time setting meal preferences for the next few months. So when your stressed brain is telling you to immerse yourself in cake, honestbee doesn’t listen and delivers a delicious healthy meal instead.

Fetch

It was lovely to see an idea that “doesn’t fit”. Yet it does. It has nothing to do with food or groceries. It’s about saving time and a true concierge service. “Fetch” offers to hunt down hard-to-find items you really want to own but can only find an image of.

Feel like looking from the outside in? Join the meet-up “Quantifying The User Experience”! :)

Looking from the outside in with Hyper Island was originally published in honestbee design on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Oh, and what about full stops?

First, I should explain what I mean by product content, as Google provides different interpretations. I mean the stuff you see on a website or a mobile app that isn’t marketing content. A promotional banner or a push notification announcing a sale is marketing content. Stuff you see when entering payment details or a push updating you on your order status—isn’t. Of course, there is overlap, but that’s a different topic.

I’ve been going crazy thinking about the capitalisation of titles for some time. Whenever I see a capitalised one, I feel like I am going to get an eye infection. I mean, look at this! Why are these regular words pretending to be “America”, going up and down like a broken Disney World ride? Or a regular Disney World ride—going up and down is what they are supposed to do.

Since English is not my first language, I don’t feel the pressure of thousands of years of linguistic history on my shoulders. It leaves me free to go with my gut and common sense when it comes to writing style.

Turns out I am not that much of a rebel as I thought I were. At least two articles I found suggest that capitalisation of titles is a choice.

1. Rules for Capitalization in Titles of Articles
2. Title and sentence case

It can be argued that those who seek shall find. After all, the internet is a magical place. It allows even the craziest of us to find validation for our crazy opinions in some forgotten corner of the World Wide Web. To prove that I am not completely mad, here are some reasonable sounding arguments for writing titles in sentence case.

In an interview with eZ Systems, the awesome Karen McGrane, user experience and content strategist for web and mobile, summarises her her talk on adaptive content:

Now with mobile phones, and tablets, and smart TVs, and watches, and Google Glass, and God knows what else is going to come next, the idea that we have to have new production processes that allow us to create content separate from form, or that allow us to encode the meaning of what we want to communicate in a way that isn’t completely dependent on visual styling… It isn’t completely dependent on layout, or sizing, or styling cues derived from print –that’s sort of a mind-bending thing for human beings to have to wrap their heads around. That basically up until this point of human history, we never had to think about that and now that’s our biggest problem.

One of the arguments for capitalising titles I’ve heard is that it lets you know that the content in the title is important. The other is that it makes the title visually “more even”.

I think Karen McGrane’s thoughts on adaptive content make a whole lot of sense and render the first argument invalid. Furthermore, if you so desperately need help emphasising that the content is important, perhaps it isn’t, and you should give that draft another go.

As for the second argument, I think it is plain crazy. Sentence case titles look much cleaner. You know, because random words do not look like they are on LSD.

Lastly, even though titles are not always full sentences, the writer is still trying to tell a story, and a story has a beginning, a middle and an end. Capitalisation breaks the flow of the story.

Do you want me to look at each word separately?

Maybe I can read the third word first, then the fourth and end with the first.

I thought it may be difficult to find examples of sensible people not capitalising titles in product content. Turns out it’s not. I believe in humanity again!

These examples bring me to the second question I’ve been agonising over—should a full stop be used after sentence case titles?

To be honest, I am not sure yet, however…

1. To me, using a comma but not a full stop to end the title, like Uber does, seems to be utter madness. Like going to a hairdresser and asking for a haircut just for the left side if your head.
2. A full stop makes the title into a stronger statement. That’s good, isn’t it?
3. Or does it make sense not to use a full stop in the title, unless there is a comma or another punctuation mark, but use it in the subtitle?

As you can see, I am still pondering.

In my career as a writer/marketer, I’ve done all of the above at some point in time but, what’s worse, often on the same page. What working on product content has taught me is the importance of consistency and clarity. So I am determined to change my shady ways.

Grammar rules were invented before the internet. If we need to bend them once in a while to make content work for our new medium, so be it. Just remember, make a choice and stick to it.

I’ve been speaking and writing English for a long time now but, as a non-native speaker, I would love to hear what others think. Leave a comment :)

Product content—breaking the age old rule of capitalising titles. was originally published in honestbee design on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

One of the first tasks I had to do after joining honestbee was to review some error messages. As an average user (my background is in content marketing), I had never paid any attention to error content. Whenever I saw the word “sorry”, I spaced out.

When faced with the task, I did my utmost best to make the messages consistent, pleasant and start every single one with “sorry”. And not just error messages, all kinds of informational content.

I think there are two reasons for it:

1. Lots of products do it. I thought it is the norm.
2. I want to be kind and empathetic to our users.

As for number 1—lots of other people doing something does not a good reason make.

It’s more fun to be a pirate than to join the Navy.

Steve Jobs

Number 2 is a more complex issue. At honestbee, everyone of us at the design team has to experience conducting user research and doing customer service. I love it. It has allowed me to become more empathetic and to truly look at things from a perspective that is very different from my own.

I thought that by saying sorry, I am making the content more human and preventing users from getting angry.

One day at a design review, my manager asked me why do I use the word “sorry”. The simple answer was that I had never considered not to. But it made me think, what real value was I adding?

Look at the message below. A user’s card has expired. It is not a big deal and can happen to anyone. It seems that I am turning a neutral situation into a bad one. Why am I making the user feel bad?

I think the worst “sorry use case” is when content designers apologise for how the product or service functions. If you are putting your user in a situation where you can’t do anything but apologise — a horrible situation with no upside — rethink the whole product or service. Talk to operations, business, designers and the CEO, if need be. Just saying sorry won’t help.

It is easy to view any restrictions imposed on the user as a bad thing. For example, we could say sorry every time a user tries to add items from multiple restaurants to cart.

But we don’t. Yes, it is a restriction, however, we truly want to do the best by our customers. We believe that this “restriction” improves the overall service experience. Of course, an info message is not the place to explain our business decisions in length but we can be more positive about the whole thing.

If we were to constantly apologise for our business decisions, we would eventually convince our users that our product isn’t a very good one. Even if they once thought otherwise.

Another reason why “restrictions” can be good is that we are not targeting every single person on the planet. As all businesses, we are building our product for a particular “buyer persona”. We use “restrictions” to make the product better for our ideal customers.

Of course, I don’t at all mean that you should never apologise. My customer service training taught me that, when things truly go wrong, no beautifully written template answer can stand up to a sincere, human apology.

However, info and error messages are not meant to deal with individual situations. I see them as educational content that will be consumed by masses. It is inevitable that we will make mistakes but I think we should aim not to make them on a scale and with frightening regularity. If it were to happen, the solutions isn’t to create a bunch of apologetic error messages but to fix the business.

Disclaimer—at honestbee we are not yet free of “sorry error and info messages” but I’ve made it one of my goals for Q1 2017 to free us of negative content that doesn’t do anything for our users but slightly worsen their mood.

Why not to say “sorry” in error and info messages was originally published in honestbee design on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.