Device: Mobile App
Organization/Event: Just Design 2020 Designathon
Purpose: Community translation app
My Role: Product Designer
Just Design’s fall designathon was a space for me to explore the potential of technology to offer solutions to social justice issues.
Prompt: Decide on the issue that you as a team want to tackle, do some research to help you gain empathy on the stakeholders involved, and design a screen-based solution that might work!
Issue that we chose to tackle: There are many people in the U.S. who have a limited proficiency in English, however, news, media, and important information is largely only available in English. This limits the ability for people in the U.S. to gain access to vital information (including information about the pandemic), increases the spread of misinformation amongst immigrant and non-white communities, and creates a barrier to accurate knowledge and information regarding relevant topics.
Our Solution: We created designs for an app that would allow users to translate audio, video, and text in their language of choice.
User Research:
With the limited three-day stretch that we had available, we relied on research from external sources. The existing research presented to us 1) the user base for such an app 2) what type of content to focus on and 3) the importance of easy sharing ability.
User Base
A KQED article described the roles that children play in multilingual families as translators for their parents.
“A 10-year-old girl named Maggie called KQED Forum recently to ask a COVID-19 question on behalf of her parents...”
- KQED.org
“We immigrated to the Peninsula Bay Area when I was 5 years old, from Ukraine. I made so many calls, sent so many messages, did so many tasks as a kid that required me to translate between Ukrainian and English. These experiences forced me and many other kids to grow up too quickly. It’s now only exacerbated during these tumultuous times.”
- KQED.org
Content
New and accurate information about the COVID-19 pandemic is difficult to acquire, even for English speakers as misinformation spreads rapidly. This is particularly true for non-fluent residents who have little to no sources to receive valid information on pressing health concerns and events.
"For immigrants, they rely on either friends or organizations or institutions that can do some translation for them … but then you open the door for all these rumors flying around and you don’t know what is real and what is not,” she said."
- WBUR.org
“It's the broader immigrant community that concerns her, some of whom she says are getting information from unofficial sources. ‘There is so much ignorance and so much incredulity,” she says. “People don’t believe in this crisis until it hits them firsthand, because the information people get is from Facebook.’”
- WBUR.org
“She says she didn’t know that National Grid — which provides her electricity and gas — announced they would not be shutting off people’s utilities during the outbreak.”
- WBUR.org
Another concern is a lack of translated information regarding current events and social justice issues, especially those that affect residents or their families.
All four members of my group (including myself) come from immigrant family backgrounds and expressed difficulty in being able to discuss social issues such as LGBTQ+ rights, women’s rights, racial inequality, and most importantly issues that center United States politics and government in a way that was translated accurately in terms of both language and culture.
Sharing
Many immigrant/non-English speaking residents use social media as a way to share information such as articles, videos, and audio clips. Common platforms amongst immigrants include WhatsApp, WeChat, KaKow, and Facebook Messenger.
As noted previously, immigrant communities often rely on information shared by those in their community. Due to the limited amount of translated resources (especially easily shareable anad digestible content), misinformation is often spread.
Our Main Components:
Easily share media.
Because immigrant/non-English speaking communities share information through social media and messaging apps frequently, we decided to implement an easy-to-use share feature that allows users to share to sites that are frequented by U.S. immigrants such as WhatsApp, WeChat, KaKow, and Facebook Messenger.
Translate efficiently.
One issue we needed to tackle was how to make the process of translation as easy and efficient as possible. Considering the short attention span amongst media consumers, we decided to keep the maximum translation length to 10 minutes for videos/audio and 20,000 words for text and thus narrow the focus of the app to shorter, digestible content that is often shared on social media platforms.
VIDEO:
For the translation of a video, we decided on creating a system where the user can choose whether to translate it by creating their own video or doing an audio voiceover. In the case that a user decides to create their own video, they can input images/clips of other videos and add a voiceover or they can record themselves speaking. The original video can be seen on the bottom and the user can reference that video in case they forgot what was originally said. This keeps users from having to go back and forth between pages in order to remember what was said.
We also drew inspiration from Tiktok’s video creation method which allows users to pause the video that they are making. This will create a white line in the progress bar where the user has paused. Thus, if the user wants to translate piece by piece or messes up on one part of the translation, they don’t have to translate the whole video all over again.
After the video has been created, the user can decide to add closed captions and/or a voiceover. The user can also adjust the privacy settings to restrict who has access to the video. This is important in case the user doesn’t feel comfortable sharing a video of themselves in public, but still wants to educate their family or friends on certain topics/events.
AUDIO:
To translate an audio recording, the user can simply press record and start speaking. The original audio is at the top so that the user can listen to the original audio for reference.
TEXT:
As mentioned previously, the maximum word count a written piece can be when submitted to the app is 20,000 words. This makes the translation process easier for users and keeps the app’s focus on translation of shareable/digestible media. Each paragraph is separated and the user can translate one paragraph at a time. This way, the user can focus on one small chunk of text at a time, review their translation with the original, submit the translation, then move on to the next chunk of text. When the user clicks submit, the original text is replaced with the translated text so that the user can review the entire translation after they have finished translating.
Vote on the best translation.
During the ideation phase, the issue of possibly inaccurate translations arose. How can we know whether a translation is accurate and appropriate? Thus, we decided to do a community-based voting system where multiple people can translate either the full text/audio/video and users can vote on the best translation. Therefore, if a fully translated piece is poorly translated or does not convey the message appropriately, users have the option to translate the piece themselves and/or vote on their favourite translation. The translations with the highest scores will be viewed at the top.
Browse by topic, trending, and language.
The home page is designed in a way to optimize sharing capability. The purpose of the app is to give non-English speaking individuals access to resources and thus, sharing of the translated pieces is a vital component of the app. We want the user to be able to open the app, browse through videos, and find relevant and important information that they can consume or share.
Users can view videos by topic, language, trending globally, and trending locally.
View notifications on translations.
My team incorporated a notifications page that would allow users to see updates on whether a translation had been made for media they wanted to see translated, updates on submissions, how many upvotes they got on their translation, and badges. The updates help increase user interaction and specific updates on upvotes and badges encourage users to continue translating on the app.
Final Thoughts
This designation was an intense experience where I was able to rapidly develop new skills and work on an engaging and complex project. I was also able to consider how I might cater to an immigrant audience and people with limited access to resources rather than just the general population. Considering the complexity in creating a smooth translation process, I feel like my team was able to manage a proficient UX while covering several bases including text/audio/video translation, sharing features, a notifications page, and browsing ability. However, I still feel that more features can be added to make the translation process even more efficient.
This concept is one that I want to delve into further and expand upon. Being a part of an immigrant community, I would want to use this to educate and provide resources to my family and friends and I know many others who feel the same. After the designathon, my team and I all expressed a strong interest in continuing the project and are planning on expanding the concept and seeing where it will take us.