Project Summary
Discover how I address the challenges of language barriers during frequent travel through innovative design. In an era dominated by AI trends and pocket assistants, my projects strive for immediate and accurate translations, envisioning a future where technology becomes the ultimate companion for global explorers.
Project Challenge
As someone navigating new languages, I want to seamlessly communicate in casual to corporate settings in order to integrate into a foreign environment.
HMW design a tool for seamless communication, aiding those adapting to new languages and integrating into unfamiliar environments?
Competitive Analysis
Google Translate
The infamous Google Translate that helped everyone get by during the early years of our life is convenient and easy to use. Including features on the mobile app, such as conversation, voice entry, and photo translations, Google Translate lacks in one key aspect which is fluency.
ChatGPT
ChatGPT on the other hand allows for prompts to help translate a message in a specific way. The downside to this is that a prompt needs to be issued beforehand and voice dialogue is not active without a third party application.
User Interviews
Conducted interviews, asking a variety of questions to 15 potential users of varying backgrounds.
What is your biggest frustration with your go-to translation tool?
Cultural Nuances
Existing translation tools struggle to capture nuanced expressions and cultural subtleties, especially in professional or formal settings.
Voice Recognition
Inaccuracies in translations as existing tools grapple with speech recognition limitations.
Context Awareness
Impact communication in dynamic environments, and tend to default to overly formal language, limiting adaptability.
Hypothesis
An AI integrated translator with custom prompts and presets.
If we implement generative prompts in our AI translation app to craft
natural-sounding personas for text translation we
then we can enhance cross-cultural communication
because it tailors language to specific social and professional contexts.
Cultural Sensitivity
Enhanced Speech Recognition
Context Adaptability
User Flow
Leveraging our findings from our research, we mapped out a generic flow for how the user can interact with the app. Polly, for us, was not just a translation tool but an AI assistant that is there to make your translating tasks feel seamless. Tackling the main pain points that we set up was fairly easy with GPT integration, the difficult part was to make the set up and use of our app feel intuitive and inviting for the users.
I want to be able to select and customize my personas for contextual translations
I want to be able to use my voice to translate conversations.
Final Designs
MVP Mockups and Flows
Splash Screen and Onboarding
Persona Selection and Text Input
Voice Input
Dialogue Translation
Customizing Personas
Conclusion
The value of user testing could not be emphasized enough.
I have learned a lot on managing a team, the inside workings of backend development, and the importance of constant user testing. Although it was not shown above, I went through hundreds of different iterations for each component of this application and there are still many details that have yet to be touched upon yet. Starting a new project is always challenging but the main importance was to keep working at it, one step at a time.
Try out Polly on the GPT store
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