All categories/Product and design
Interaction and UX · Level Advanced · Design Multilingual UI
Multilingual UI: leave room
Translated labels overflow.
Prompt
Ask what the user is doing and what they fear, then decide what goes on screen. Visual tricks do not fix structural problems.
Task: Translated labels overflow.
[Before you start, do three things]
1. Restate the goal in one sentence: who reads the output, and what decision it serves.
2. If I have not given you the following, ask me. Do not assume:
- languages
- UI elements
- RTL languages
- font plan
3. Say how you plan to do it (at most 5 steps) and wait for my go-ahead.
[Go through each of these]
- allow for the longest language, often German or Russian
- no fixed-width text containers
- mirror the layout for RTL
- components that will overflow now
[Process]
1. State the single job of this screen
2. Answer the user's current worry first
3. Order by information priority and delete
4. Design empty, loading and error states
5. Give a minimal usability test
[Output]
One job, priority, three states, test plan.
[Do not]
- Never two primary actions on one screen
- Do not test with lorem ipsum
- Never ignore the empty state
- Never use colour as the only signalWhat to state before it starts
Leave these unsaid and the model fills them with an assumption. Most 'wrong answers' start here.
- languages
- UI elements
- RTL languages
- font plan
Go through each of these
Where this kind of work most often goes wrong. Already in the prompt, so you do not have to remember it.
- allow for the longest language, often German or Russian
- no fixed-width text containers
- mirror the layout for RTL
- components that will overflow now