Good day to you. My name is Max Dolan and I will be going over my experience reverse engineering the “GoogleLens” feature of the “Google Translate” mobile app. Now, you might ask, “why specifically THIS?” Well the answer simply is… before transitioning into UX Design I used to work as a Japanese-English Translator and I used this feature a fair bit to double-check my work by swapping between Japanese and English. Additional reasons I chose this feature include:
- Checking to see if there have been any improvements since last using it.
- See if there were ways TO improve it.
- In addition to the feedback I have given, I am secretly hoping Google notices this post and makes changes all the sooner. (Because the ability to switch languages could do with some streamlining)
Such were my reasons and so my work continued. Firstly, I set out to find the UI elements I needed to recreate the app in Figma (There is a nice gigantic box labeled “ICONS” under the prototype I created. Not to worry, I will link the prototype at the end of this post!). With this done, I moved on to the next step. The very name of this challenge: WIREFRAMING!
As it tends to go, we start with a Lo-Fi User Flow:
Although most may only use this feature to just translate a word ONE WAY there are cases where foreigners in new countries may use this feature to switch languages. Not just to quickly learn what a word meant, but also to learn what a word in their own language might be in language of the country they are residing in.
To delve deeper, I then went about doing a Task Analysis:
What are mobile users trying to accomplish by using GoogleLens?
- Trying to translate what they can put in front of their smartphone’s camera.
- Using this feature in the hopes of getting a translation quicker than they would simply typing the word out.
- Perhaps, in the case of language learners, translating what they see with GoogleLens and taking a screenshot for the sake of learning.
- Professional translators wishing to double-check their work (both the original text AND their own translation)
How are users currently completing the task? People are completing that task using:
- Search engines
- Photographing and looking up word at leisure
- Asking a friend what word might mean in their language
- Consulting a language dictionary
With due diligence done, I then made my Prototype (which you can find at the link here):
(On off-chance prototype does not work, simply go to column on the right and select “Prototype.” You should then be able to interact with the language tabs and switch the languages this way.)
