Project Dates:

20th May, 2024 - Ongoing

Company:

PikPok

Project Aim:

To create a simplified process that enables teams to better self-manage and monitor progress, reducing reliance on individuals and minimising errors.

Tools:

Google Sheets, Apps Script, GPT-4

Introduction

Rival Stars Horse Racing supports 18 languages and manages over 6,500 unique strings for each language - the largest string data of any project within our organisation.

This process is important to ensure our content is accurately localised for a global audience.

The Problem

Process visibility:
Departments such as Quality Assurance - who require translations to sign off work - couldn't clearly check translation progress.
Prone to error:
A combination of excessive manual tasks, people dependency and an outdated scripts caused errors in multiple areas of the process.
Instructions:
These were out of date due to a technical change.

Project Goals

Create a simplified process to enable teams to check progress and self-manage better.
Automate where possible to reduce error and save time
Make the process less dependent on individuals

Initial Investigation

Building an internal tool is too costly compared to the value-added, so we focused on improving the current process.

Simplifying the sheet

Existing Sheet

We workshopped what we could do to simplify the sheet, our aim was to reduce visual clutter and make it more straightforward to manage and check progress.

With the key areas identified, I began simplifying the sheet to reduce visual clutter while improving communication around translation status.

How did this help the project goals?

Process Visibility:
By reducing the amount of statuses and reducing visual noise, the table aims to make it easier to find information needed and reduce cognitive overload.
Prone to error:
Automating some tasks to ensure cleaner data, re-enforce correct string key writing and reduce manual processes.

Additionally cleaner data means easier to see any errors or issues that might arise throughout the process.

New Automation

Adding Strings

Taking inspiration from another teams process, I implemented a script that added rows to the bottom of the table with pre-filled information.

Adding Screenshots

Adding screenshots was one of the most time consuming parts of adding English strings, however, is one of the most important parts to give more context to translators to ensure accuracy.

Traslation Process

Existing Process

We mapped the existing process and identified some areas for improvement.

New Process:

Issues Addressed:

Changing status was time consuming and could be missed or forgotten

Status is automatically updated when scripts are run to ensure they’re always up to date
Script was prone to errors and could cause hours of work if there were issues.

Script was re-written with specific error logging surfaced for instant feedback if something went wrong
Was not very visible to the teams when translations were sent or received, especially if status was out of date or had been missed

Script updates the String Table with the date the String was sent or received for translation.

I additionally added some other elements aiming to save time and reduce manual admin work:

Automated email notification to the translation team.
Automatic updating of the Dashboard to represent current status.

We wanted to strike a good balance between automation and still having touch-points to ensure the strings were successfully written and sent with no errors.

User Testing

Accessibility

Prototyping

Localization Process Improvement

Introduction

The Problem

Project Goals

Process

Initial Investigation