Stephanie Pereira: Designing Hyper-localized Content – Episode 204

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Localizing digital product content is challenging on its own. When you add the need to communicate about sensitive financial topics to very specific audiences, the complexity of the work quickly grows.

Stephanie Pereira is a content design manager working on the Google Payments product. She deftly balances a range of internal compliance and design concerns with the very specific hyper-localization needs of her audience.

(We had an internet connection issue around 28:00 – apologies for the break in continuity.)

We talked about:

• her hyper-localization work as a content design manager at Google Payments
• how localization work can highlight product features that may need to be contextualized differently or otherwise changed
• how she balances global brand policies and very specific local design and language considerations
• how even presentation-level information architecture decisions can vary by locale
• how variety in voice and tone and language can vary even in the context of one interaction environment
• how dealing with that dynamic variation in content shows up elsewhere in her work
• how the Google design system supports her work
• the different levels at which you can hyper-localize a product
• the variety of privacy issues that arise in her hyper-localization work
• how her multi-lingual family history influences her work
• how even the smallest local touches can improve a customer’s experience of a product

Stephanie’s bio

Stephanie Pereira currently leads content design for Google Payments in APAC, supporting hyperlocalized experiences in markets like India and Japan. After deciding that law was just not her thing, Stephanie spent the decade pre-Google leading regional content and business operations teams at local startups like Groupon APAC, Fave Asia, and honestbee.

In her day to day work, Stephanie enjoys figuring out how to write with empathy for different cultures and being best friends with all her legal counsels.

Connect with Stephanie online

• LinkedIn

Video

Here’s the video version of our conversation:

Podcast intro transcript

This is the Content Strategy Insights podcast, episode number 204. The internet has made the world a lot smaller, and some aspects of communicating online lend themselves to one-size-fits-all, globalized content. But product and content designers still need to serve the needs of local populations, and sometimes these groups can have very specific needs. At Google, Stephanie Pereira works on hyper-localized content, balancing a mix of challenging internal product demands with a rich variety of external cultural concerns.

Interview transcript

Larry:
Hi, everyone. Welcome to episode number 204 of the Content Strategy Insights podcast. I am really delighted today to welcome to the show Stephanie Pereira. Stephanie is a content design manager at Google Pay. She’s based in Singapore. And welcome to the show, Stephanie. Tell the folks a little bit more about what you’re up to these days.

Stephanie:
Thank you for having me. So, I work on payments. I’m based in Singapore, as you just mentioned. A lot of the work I do is hyper-localized in the sense that we work on very specific markets. And that’s sort of given me the opportunity to think about how we write for different people, what their mental model is in a lot of these different places. Because I work in payments, especially how their relationship with money, how that translates to language as well. So yeah, it’s been a very fun journey.

Larry:
Yeah. Well, language … I’ve had a few people from the financial industry world, and money stuff is notoriously fraught. So, that kind of adds a whole accountability level to your job, I’m imagining, and the important-

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Larry:
But it’s also like for the individual end user, it’s really important to understand specifically what’s going on and how to complete that transaction you’re in the middle of. Can you give an example of … Because I think a lot of people think, “Oh, okay, I’m going to do my product in India. I’ll just translate it. I’ll just do Hindi and English and we’ll be good to go.” Tell me why that’s a dumb idea.

Stephanie:
I might have a specific example here. I’ve worked on screens where we’ve had a lot of language, and a few years ago we had one of these screens where we wanted to do it globally. It’s a lot of language. What we tried to do is maybe simplify some of the language, like use simpler words, use shorter phrases, use things like that. And one of the things we realized was just the sheer amount of content, even when the language itself was simpler, it just gave people pause, it made people feel anxious. It made people feel like, “You know what? This entire product is just too hard for me. I’m not confident. I don’t know how to use this.” And these were people who’d been using the product every day, but at this point they were just like, “Yep, I’m out. This is too hard for me.”

Stephanie:
So, I think it’s also just recognizing that sometimes that translation is not just, “Hey, we translated it. That’s the extent of it.” It’s also recognizing that the feature itself might need to be shown or contextualized or changed in a way to suit the market. Because what works in one place, for example, if for example, this were a privacy screen, in some markets that longer language would be comforting like, “Hey, we’re being very transparent.” But in some markets this just feels overwhelming. So, that’s sort of, I guess, one of the nuances we had in these markets.

Larry:
That’s really interesting to me, because you just described a conversation, you have to go back to the product manager and just go, “Hey, this isn’t working over here.” Do you have a lot of conversations like that? Or tell me, do you collaborate differently? I don’t know how many other content design roles you’ve had, but that sounds like a unique leverage point to influence the product itself.

Stephanie:
I think because I work in payments, the more difficult conversation sometimes to have is with legal, because there’s a lot of language that we have to have. I think a couple of years ago I was working on something where I think one of our legal partners said something that just really resonated with me as a UX writer. She said, “Hey, if people can’t even understand this, what are we doing?” We can’t ask people to consent to something that they don’t even understand.

contextualized or changedSo, it is our job to make things a lot easier. It is our job to sort of surface things in a way that makes sense, in a way that makes people feel like, “Okay, I get what’s going on. I understand. This is clear. This is transparent. I know what I’m agreeing to.” And so, I think when you have a partner like that, that recognizes that the intent is to make things easy and clear and help people understand what they’re agreeing to, then it really helps.

Larry:
That’s it. Because legal will definitely keep your feet to the fire in terms of that being specific and clear about the intent. Now, all of a sudden, I’m curious, so the hyper-localization, I’m just trying to figure out and picture what level does that legal obligation go down to? How localized does the language have to be to comply with local laws and regulations, for example?

Stephanie:
Yeah. I think a lot of it, especially with payments is regulations are local, but we also often have very global policies in how we phrase certain things or how we want to position ourselves. So, a lot of it is just making sure we’re having the right conversations with people to be like, “Hey, we understand this is the guideline, this is the thing, but what’s a good work-around here? What do we do to make this more user-friendly in this country?” But also just recognizing, “Hey, this is the brand we have and this is how we want to position ourselves.”

Stephanie:
So, I think just going back to that eternal struggle as a content designer, it’s always about what the trade-off is, right? You want to make something user-friendly. You also want to make sure you’re meeting all your internal guidelines. But yeah, we just have to have the discussion and see where it falls.

Larry:
You’re reminding me, the friend who introduced us is Anna Potapova, the content designer at Alibaba Express, and she was talking about when you’re talking about that notion of globalization versus localization and the specifics for the local environment, in China versus the West, there’s this whole difference in density of information and that kind of thing. And so, as we’re talking, it occurs to me like, okay, great. There’s another dimension. You have those cultural things underneath it all, and then you have these very specific legal requirements, plus all the usual UX design stuff. And you just mentioned that it’s all about balancing those trade-offs.

Larry:
Can you give examples? Like we were talking before we went on, about that language around debited and credited, and very specific financial language. How do you deal with that kind of … Because legal probably says you have to use a word in this family or something. Tell me about how you reconcile that stuff.

Stephanie:
I actually have a very good example for that because I’m based in Singapore now, I’m Malaysian, but I’m based in Singapore. I like to say that the way we speak is very economical. So, what’s that character in The Office who says, “Why use many words when few words will do?” So, something I realized when I first joined and when I was writing here, based in Singapore, was I would write something in one line, I would share it with a writer in the US and they would be like, “This just sounds really rude. It’s very direct.” I don’t add the little like just and like also, and all those little sort of cushion words you use when you write.

Stephanie:
So yeah, I think this felt very normal to me as someone who just we’re very used to being very economical with the way we speak. So, that was an adjustment for me. And I think just as I’ve been writing, going on and writing, I’ve also just kind of noticed how in different markets this economical sort of way of speaking works. People just, especially in the UI, they just want to know where they are. They just want to be directed through the flow, “Tell me what to do.”

Stephanie:
And I did realize in contrast, I think, in some of the more American, Western UX, for example, there was a lot of language around benefits like, “Yes, tell me what to do but also make it compelling. Tell me why. Tell me why I should be doing these things.” So, this is probably a bad example, but it might be for example like, “Link your account to do this.” And that might be just that direct way that I might write it here, whereas I think some other place I might say like, “Hey, to do this better, to do whatever, this might help.” So, I think there’s a bit of that nuance there as well, just being more direct versus understanding that in some markets people just need to be guided a little bit more.

Larry:
Yeah. That’s really interesting that notion that … And it struck me as you were talking, that there could be even more levels to that, not just the tone, but also the amount of information that they expect in their cultural context. Like, “Just do this,” versus, “Do this so you can…” And, “Do this so you can…” Because that gives you these two benefits or whatever. Does your design work get that precise? I’m trying to figure out how this is ensconced in the code in a product.

Stephanie:
It does. It does, and I think especially here, maybe here in Asia … In my previous company, I think one thing we used to hear a lot from some of the folks we work with is, “Stop having so much white space in your design.” And I think if you just browse some local Southeast Asian apps or even other Asian apps here, you’ll notice that that’s pretty common. There isn’t a lot of white space in apps. You’ll also notice that, I think, maybe for someone who isn’t used to the UX, that it feels pretty clipped, because you might see for example, even in a sort of feed design, where every single category is maybe organized in a different way, maybe some of these have squares, some of these have circles. It’s very dynamic.

Stephanie:
It’s designed in a way where each category feels distinct. It’s designed in a way where it makes it easy to scan and discover things. And I think sometimes in Western UI, for example, some of the UX is designed in a way where it’s meant to be more of a feed-style thing. It’s a directory. You have a menu. You know where everything is at a glance. Whereas, I think here it’s just like boom, everything’s in your face and we hope that the thing that matters the most to you will catch your attention because it’s designed in a specific way.

Stephanie:
So yeah, there’s definitely that nuance as well. I think you’ll see a lot of different shapes and stuff. One very interesting thing I saw recently, I think, with one of our East Asian markets was just even with the tone we used … So, we saw, for example, that people recognized different types of content and they wanted us to be using … Again, going back, as a UX writer, one of the things that we keep in mind is like, “Hey, keep your language consistent. Keep your tone consistent. Keep all that stuff consistent.” But this was interesting to me because people wanted that variety in language. Things like benefits, “Make this playful. Make this sound a certain way. It’s okay to be a bit more conversational. It’s okay to be a bit more cheeky.” Whereas privacy language, “No, just be serious. These are terms and conditions. You have to use formal language here. It’s okay for things to be long.” And having that variety in language was what made it easy to scan. So, that’s also interesting. I think it’s not common everywhere, but it is common here.

Larry:
You’re reminding me, you’ve mentioned a couple of times getting into the mental model of your user and discerning that. And so, some people expect and maybe even demand consistency and others are like, “No, if you’re talking about this, talk about it that way.”

Larry:
Again, what is the language … You think of the simplest thing … I’ve seen in a lot of places, you come up with the design and the flow and the language, and then you send it out for localization. And then you just put those different words in or maybe slightly different screens, but this sounds more complex than that. How does that work, I don’t know, in the system or the technical implementation of it that, “Okay, for this one you always use the same consistent layout, but here, this category is organized this way and that category is organized that way”?

Stephanie:
Yeah. It’s a very interesting challenge and I think being a content designer in this part of the world is very unique and it’s precisely because of this, because the design itself is so dynamic, I think you really, really need your content designer partnering with you from the start, right? Because you might have small chips or small cuts and you want to mix and match all these different pieces and the type of content you might put in each of these things is different.

Stephanie:
It’s a little more difficult to write for dynamic design in this way compared to, for example, when you’ve got a single screen and all you have is like header, sub-header, two CTA buttons. So, a lot of the work we do comes in very early. I think there’s a lot of back and forth with the designer being like, “Okay, do we have a card here? Do we have three cards here? Do we bold this?” It all just comes into play because the way things look on the page matters just as much as the words themselves.

Larry:
Again, back to the mental model, that’s what they’re expecting to see there.

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Larry:
As you’re saying this, I’m wondering, have you experimented …. With the guest just prior to this one, on the show, one of the things we talked about was the new capabilities of AI to auto-generate layouts. That’s more like hyper-personalization in general than hyper-localization, but it seems relevant here too. Have you looked into that at all or is that on the table, that notion of in some way automating or augmenting your work with AIs or other agents to do that kind of layout stuff or those variants?

Stephanie:
I have not. I think it’s interesting. I definitely see potential there. I can’t say that I’ve tried it personally, but I’m also just thinking about just the fact that a lot of this sort of organization like, “Hey, should we use a card? Should we use this?” There’s definitely a world where you could set different rules for when you use different parts of this. And all this stuff is so complex, right? And so, I can see a world where with enough guardrails you could be like, “Hey, what’s the right way to organize all these different components and icons and strings?” And have something that’s compelling based on all that. So yeah, I think that might be interesting, especially in this place where everything needs to come together.

Larry:
Yeah. Well, and maybe I’m overthinking it too, maybe it’s just a more sophisticated design system because you all have a pretty famous design system at Google.

Stephanie:
We do. We do.

Larry:
And is it pretty extensible in the sense that when you get to an edge case like this, you’re like, “No, we don’t use the same layout in those similar looking sections”?

Stephanie:
Yeah. It definitely is, and I think I feel like I’m lucky enough that I work on a team that gets to do pretty hyper-local stuff, even though we’re at a big company like Google. So, it’s nice to maybe have the best of both worlds. You have the design system, but you also think about what makes sense.

Stephanie:
We were talking a little bit earlier about the extent of hyper-localization and it’s definitely different how far you go sometimes with these things. I imagine if I were at a company that was primarily in Singapore and my audience was just that, like I’m only writing for this one market, how far am I going? I might be a lot more Singaporean in how I write. Whereas, I think if you’re a more global brand, you might want to introduce smaller nuances here and there, where it feels like it resonates. Small touches here and there where you’re like, “Okay. I get it. This small thing felt Singaporean, but if I were not Singaporean, I might not notice it.” So yeah, I think there’s a bit of that balance as well, but there are also places where it feels like it really makes sense, and so, we push a little bit more.

Larry:
Mm-hmm. That example of the Singapore … That kind of gets into the … We talked a little bit earlier about tone, but there’s also the voice of the brand and the product, and that kind of gets into that. It’s like, “No, we’re Singapore-based and we use local slang.” Or, whatever that implies. But again, that kid of gets more into product decision-making, or branding even, about how you’re going to talk. I guess, maybe can you talk maybe, I don’t know, generally about how voice and tone manifest and how they work together in hyper-localized work?

Stephanie:
Yeah. My favorite example to use when just talking about hyper-localization, honestly, is McDonald’s. I think McDonald’s does such a great job with hyper-localization, right?

Stephanie:
So, I’m on holiday in Malaysia right now, which is where I’m from, and you can get fried chicken with rice from McDonald’s here. It’s nasi lemak, which is a local dish here. But it feels like McDonald’s, right? Because the fried chicken is McDonald’s and that’s their brand. So, I think when we think about hyper-localization, especially when you’re a big brand, you want to make sure that your voice and tone and all the core components still feel the brand, but you also want to look for areas where like, hey, if you did one or two things, it would resonate locally.

Larry:
Interesting. And that’s a classic, because I’ve traveled enough to have seen … I don’t go to McDonald’s a lot, but every once in a while I’ll stick my head in just to see what the local variant is, and that’s really interesting. Do they still have burgers and fries or is it all local cuisine?

Stephanie:
Yeah. Yeah, it’s funny. I came here yesterday and they had a spicy chili burger, so that was interesting.

Larry:
And I’m trying to picture now analogies in like a digital SaaS product. And again, a lot of what we’ve talked about is how you present it, but how the product might … Are there situations … Again, my mind is kind of reeling it. You got all these lawyers saying, “Nope, you got to do this.” And you have product people who have ideas, and brand people. And then, all these people with their individual mental models whom you’re serving. It’s fascinating. How close do you think you’re getting … I guess that’s the idea. When I first heard about hyper-localization, I’m like, “Are we talking about individuals or cohorts or communities?” What level do you think we’re at right now in terms of how precisely you can hyper-localize content for folks?

Stephanie:
I think there’s always going to be a push and pull, especially with legally mandated content. One maybe example I’ve also had from a while back is especially when you have controls, right? You have consent, then you have all these controls, there’s sometimes the specific wording someone might have used for how that control is positioned. And because it’s legal language, because you want to make sure people understand what they’re consenting to, there might be a requirement that, “Hey, we have to use this very specific language anytime we talk about this very specific control.”

Stephanie:
But sometimes it so happens you might use a word that feels a bit complicated, without going into specifics, I don’t know, maybe you’re using the word “authentication” or you’re using the word “personalization”, and these feel like big words for some people. So, there might be areas sometimes where sometimes it’s hard to make that change. Sometimes you also look at, “What’s the spirit of this content? Is there a different way of phrasing this where we still sort of match the intent of what this is supposed to mean?” So yeah, I think there are a lot of conversations we have around these things, especially with legalese. But yeah, we definitely have issues like that where we’re stuck sometimes with words that might not translate as well.

Larry:
Mm-hmm. You’re reminding me, I was at a conference a couple of weeks ago where a really brilliant keynote speaker talked about, in terms of consent and when you agree to terms of service, he talked about basically how kind of inane it was to make a lot of assumptions based on what he called the brief explosion of trust. Excuse me. Does that make sense? Is that something you wrestle with that…

Stephanie:
I feel like I have a lot of controversial takes about privacy. Language, especially, I know … There are definitely a lot of patterns that have become common with privacy and sometimes you see them so often that people almost develop a kind of blindness towards it. Right? You see it so often that you’re like, “Okay, I’m just going to tap through and because I assume I know what this is.” So, I’ve seen stuff like that.

Stephanie:
I think one very interesting example recently, I think we had an English version, which we might’ve been testing. We wrote different versions of this English version and most people were like, “You know what? It doesn’t matter how you write it. Nobody reads all this stuff. I’m just going to tap through.” We happened to show some people the same version of this in a local language, and then people saw it and they were like, “Oh my god, I actually understand what this means. All right, maybe I might not do this.”

Stephanie:
So, I think it’s interesting that sometimes we’ve developed patterns for these things and so people just are like, “Yeah, I saw this system dialogue. Anytime I see a system dialogue, this is what I’m supposed to do. Nobody reads all this stuff.” But then when you draw a bit more attention to it, then they’re like, “Oh, wait, okay. Right. This is what it actually means. This is what it actually says.” So yeah, I think same thing with the pattern stuff, right? Sometimes something becomes so common that you just sort of run through it, because that’s what you think you’re supposed to do and sometimes just switching things up actually helps.

Larry:
You’re reminding me of the … We’re all striving to create these friction-free experiences and every once in a while, especially in terms of consent or financial obligations, you might want to have a little bit more friction in there.

Larry:
Hey, Stephanie, I can’t believe it, we’re coming up close to time, but before we wrap up, is there anything last, anything you want to revisit from the conversation or just anything you want to make sure we share before we wrap up?

Stephanie:
Yeah. I mean, I think when we first started talking about this, I was giving this example of how when I was growing up … My family is mostly made up of teachers and I grew up in Malaysia, but I spoke a lot of English at home, but I would speak Malayalam, which is my mother tongue, to my grandmother who would … Sorry, I would speak English to her and she would speak Malayalam back to me. And I think that definitely I wouldn’t speak the same English to her that I would speak to my parents. I wouldn’t speak the same type of English to her that I would speak to my friends.

Stephanie:
I spoke very simple English to her and I only realized much later that she was also speaking very [we had a Zoom issue here, just missed a few seconds of Stephanie’s answer ]… When you’re writing, even in the same language, even writing in English, like different people experience English in different ways. It’s the same thing as if you’re writing in Portuguese or some other language … in countries. Different people are going to understand that language in a different way. And so, one, it’s always helpful not to make assumptions like, “Hey, everyone speaks English and so we’re all going to understand it in a certain way.”

Stephanie:
I think the other thing also, just talking about McDonald’s and the local experience, was sometimes just having these very, very small local touches just really help make people feel like, “You know what? Someone here cares about making this brand feel local,” and these little touches really, really help so much.

Larry:
Interesting. So, there’s a lot of talk in our world about baby steps, and maybe that’s a good baby step in terms of localization content practice is just whatever little … To demonstrate that you care, even the slightest bit can help.

Stephanie:
Yes.

Larry:
Fantastic.

Stephanie:
Yes.

Larry:
One very last thing, Stephanie. If folks want to connect with you or follow you online, what’s the best place to find you?

Stephanie:
LinkedIn.

Larry:
LinkedIn. Okay. That’s always the answer now. Well, thanks so much for taking time out of your day, Stephanie. I really enjoyed the conversation.

Stephanie:
Thank you so much for having me.