This is how we do it at Doctolib: Collaboration between Product Designers & UX Writers
Languages at Doctolib
To this date, Doctolib operates in Germany, France and Italy, with their respective languages, and we communicate globally in English. As a company with multinational employees and multilingual products, one of our priorities as Product Designers (PD) and UX Writers (UXW), is to create our digital products in English first for mutual understanding. More specifically, designing with localisation in mind. Localisation is “the process of making a product or service more suitable for a particular country, area” (Cambridge University Press, n.d.). By working and designing in English, we are reassured that we can all collaborate efficiently.
What was the problem?
I joined Doctolib in August 2022 as a Junior Product Designer. Norwegian and English are my native languages. I do not speak any of the three user-facing Doctolib languages: French, German or Italian, which is not unusual at an international company. I started working on a French product which was designed in French, and spent a lot of time trying to uncover how the product works and its goals because of the language barrier. This initially was a limitation which meant that I knew I would need to collaborate with the responsible UXW on this topic to make the designs work. When a PD works on a product in a language they do not know, it is vital that they have the right tools and support to bring their design skills to the table. This is one of many reasons why PD should work with UXW to successfully iterate on designs for their products. We also have a “rule” that all designs at Doctolib should be in English in order to ensure collaboration and understanding for everyone in the company.
Curiosity for what works when we collaborate
When approaching this project, I became curious as to how other designers collaborate with UXW. That’s when I started working with Mike, the designated UXW for the project I was working on, and we eventually found a method that worked for us. Our method involved weekly 1:1 syncs, localisation and translations on the sections of the product I was working on. While working on this, I realised that if I was facing this challenge on products at an International company, then there must be other PD or UXW facing similar cases, which lead me to facilitate a workshop to find out how PD and UXW have previously and/or currently work on products in different languages in order to improve collaboration.
We had a workshop to see what works
At Doctolib, we currently have 30 Product Designers and 6 UX Writers. In our Design team, we have 6 pillars we use to guide our focus when working on products:
- Start with why
- Empathy
- Consistency
- Simplicity
- Critique and collaboration
- Learn and be curious
I used the first 3 pillars, start with why, empathy and consistency, as the focus for the workshop to discover pains and gains, followed by creating an action plan of the results to ensure that there will be better collaboration. During the workshop, I asked the following questions:
- In your own personal experience, what was the feature/team that you worked on and what was the target language for it?
- How have you collaborated with a PD/UXW to make your project work?
- What are your pains when working on a topic in another language?
- What can help us collaborate more efficiently?
Following the questions, the PD and UXW were asked to vote on their favourite action plans which would later help navigate what to prioritise.
Our pain points when collaborating
Through the discovery of a workshop, the struggles that PD and UXW have when working on a multilingual product overlap one another. By categorising the combined pains, we discovered that the struggles are related to:
- Lack of organisation and consistency of the product
- Poor English quality
- UXW debt (time constraints)
- Lack of documentation and not complying with using English first on the product
These pains needed to be addressed in order to understand what needs to be changed to improve the collaboration between PD and UXW. Categorising the key ideas, narrowed down the main concepts of debt.
What currently works at Doctolib
Our team has methods that are currently working and help support each individual differently depending on their topics. Based on the workshop results, I created a timeline graph with post-it notes representing what works for PD and UXW in three stages of a project:
1. The beginning of a project and throughout
2. During
3. At the end
What we have agreed to try
Based on the workshop results, we have focused on making improvements related to the following pains: documentation, tool usage and process.
To improve documentation, we want to document terms that we’ll add to the glossary when working on new features, which provides validated UXW vocabulary and guidelines. For our tool, Figma, we would like to explore using translation plugins like DeepL to auto translate copy and accelerate the translations for UXW. For PD’s, this would also give a greater idea of what the design could look like in languages that the designer does not speak, which is important when making sure the auto-layout works properly. By having better organisation of UXW iterations in a file will also allow PD to understand the product more fluently. Localisation in Figma is also a priority as this will speed the time it takes to prepare for user tests. Sticking to English as the first language on all figma files will also save time, especially for complicated projects for optimal collaboration.
Finally, creating an upgraded process will benefit collaboration. The process can be upgraded by constructing and validating a process with UXW, PD and Design Ops by writing the methods in a documentation. Considering how to refer to local concepts, context and first iterations in English is key, primarily in the kick-off of a project. By taking into account the full process, this will be beneficial when having an overview of the UXW time in the roadmap for each project.
To wrap-up
The workshop covered the first 3 pillars; start with why (the purpose of this workshop), empathy (understanding the needs of PD and UXW) and consistency (seeing what patterns we have with the current process of collaboration).
What we can collectively do to succeed is to understand how we individually work, and together work on building good habits throughout a project’s timeline whether collaborating with a PD, UXW or both! By having clear goals from the beginning of a project (whether you manage to start a project at its initial kick off, or join half way), always making sure to set times in your project to ensure there can be group workshops (if necessary), syncs (either through 1:1’s, pair designs or content clinics) and challenging each other. Finishing the project with a retro will set the team up for success in the following project. Being mindful of how everyone works individually can improve collaboration and success of a project!
A special thank you to the wonderful Design team I get to work with everyday, as well as, Mike, Amandine, Alice, Léna and Caroline for participating in this workshop. Thank you Mike, Caroline and Amandine for reviewing this blog post.
The purpose of the article is to present and share the work done by Doctolib’s tech team. The information contained in this article is provided for information purpose only (on an “as is” basis with no guarantees of completeness or accuracy) and does not constitute any legal advice, nor has a legal value. Therefore, it could not contradict in any manner whatsoever with any legal binding terms applicable to your relation with Doctolib.
