Lionbridge
Created a Multi-Dimensional Platform for the Global Leader in Translation and Localization
Lionbridge is a global communications platform providing translation and localization services for over 25 years, with an extensive network of 500,000 passionate experts worldwide. Lionbridge partners with the world's largest organizations to make the most critical brands and products available to anybody in the world seamlessly in any language. With over $600M in annual revenue, Lionbridge is the largest Language Services Provider in the industry.
The Opportunity
“We’re clearly successful, but no one can articulate why, and we don’t look, sound, or feel like we are.”
“We also don’t know how to sustain our market leadership. The competition is closing in quickly!”
“If we don’t change, we’ll be extinct.”
- The client
The Solution
Breaking barriers, building bridges themed move from a pipeline to a platform model.
My team created a new multi-dimensional platform strategy and restructured, designed, and developed a new brand around this strategy.
Through discovery, workshops, and strategy sessions for creating new branding and website, we helped unlock new opportunities and bring to life a visual language.
The Impact I Created
As the Design Director, I reported to the Chief Creative Officer. I led a 4-person team comprising 2 Designers, 1 Strategist, and 1 PM to create the new Lionbridge experience from start to finish in developing the user journey, key features, and go-to-market product.
What was accomplished
Influenced 60% of the new business pipeline within 2 years of launch
Increased unique website pageviews for desktop by more than 3x, from 100,000 to 3,200,000 in two years
Clocked 50,000 valid top-of-the-funnel chat interactions, resulting in massive engagement and millions in new business in Q3+Q4 since the launch in Spring 2019
Implemented award-winning new brand experience framework globally in 9 languages across 250+ markets in all aspects of the internal products & marketing & communications
Supported & strengthened the brand vision by the creation of a new custom font and hundreds of icons in the new icon style
Improved team collaboration & engagement and helped achieve the best outcomes using joyful methods from my toolkit
Built long-term relationships and earned repeat business contracts, including Lionbridge 2.0, for my digital agency
Won the W3, Digital Bell Ringer, and AVA Digital Awards
How I helped accomplish it
Designed and led cross-disciplinary idea generation and client co-creation sessions, workshops, and design sprints
Defined a target state customer journey while highlighting key areas of improvement and innovation opportunities
Worked closely with the CMO, VP of UX & Marketing, and other Lionbridge executives to understand the business, their long-term vision & goals for the new Lionbridge, and regularly gave them platform design status
Assisted with project scoping and created timelines to present the final design strategy and prototype
Set a foundation of solid design principles and a design vision for future growth by introducing and explaining the benefits of Joyful Design Thinking
Created a well-defined process for the team and streamlined discovery and development integration
Instilled a client- and user-centric design and quality-driven working style for the team using best practices and continuous improvement to ensure timely, quality, and budget-friendly outcomes
As per Forrester Research, a better UI could raise a website's conversion rate by up to 200% and up to 400% in case of a well-designed UX design. We leveraged such metrics to highlight the value of design to the client.
Discover and Define
An industry leader, Lionbridge works with various tech giants like Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Apple, offering translation services in 350+ languages. From vocal recognition bots (like Alexa and Siri) to video games (like Minecraft and Fortnite), it develops machine intelligence and localized content for just about everyone.
We aimed to uncover the reasons behind Lionbridge’s less traction despite its tremendous expertise & experience and helped get its due recognition through this project discovery.
What we did
Data analysis, user personas, empathy maps, user journey, comparative analysis, value proposition, UX strategy with problem and goal definitions, feature list, and analysis
Defining the project brief
Analyzing competition and inspiration
Analysis of available data
Lionbridge journey
User journey
Innovation Matrix
Vision Day Workshop
I led a Vision Day workshop with my team and stakeholders and developed the North Star idea using design thinking methods. The workshop sessions included:
UX strategy & insights discussion
User-journey discovery, identifying wishlist, and prioritization
North Star idea co-creation session
Stakeholder Q&As
The goal of this workshop was to finalize the North Star idea and its roadmap.
North Star ideas that were tested
Idea Selected: A Unique Lionbridge Chatbot Experience
According to Business Insider, the chatbot market size is projected to grow by 360%, from $2.6 billion in 2019 to $9.4 billion by 2024. The vast scope of information that chatbot provides could leverage Lionbridge's strong NLP (Natural Language Processing) in-house research and expertise for its build.
When it comes to chatbots, text is the main means of user-bot communication. And as copywriting is Lionbridge's strength, it could be leveraged to get the chatbot experience right and encourage human-like interactions. Adopting a distinct tone of voice, humor, and other personality traits led to a memorable experience for website visitors.
Chatbot study. Analysis of various chatbot applications currently available and their creative possibilities. Sketch of the Lionbridge chatbot.
The North Star Idea defined
This North Star is a remote-controlled site using a 'chatbot' that curates Lionbridge’s syndicated content, and it was created to help people understand, learn, find, and work. The choices for a user within this 'remote control' at any point of time in the experience are limited (using Hick's law) for faster navigation.
This innovation accomplishes all strategic goals such as:
Increases conversions
Enhances social experiences
Scalability
Establishes leadership
Saleable to other clients
Contextually driven and anticipatory design
The big benefit of this concept is that Lionbridge is the first to differentiate with this innovative idea. The personalized user-brand communication it enables is the future of engagement.
MVP 1.0: The Future Hub of Syndicated Lionbridge Content
The MVP site is the go-to destination for users to learn about Lionbridge’s brand, business, and perspective on the world. A community-driven concept, it walks the walk and talks the talk by translating social content in real-time.
Possible challenges and how I solved them:
Potential pressure from internal teams and business units to reactivate content that was optimized out - Facilitated constant communication and engagement during the design process
Regular content publishing - Advised on making new hires
Need for some level of governance for Lionbridge syndicated content being published - Collaborated with brand & marketing strategists for governance model creation
Require focused and dedicated effort by Lionbridge and communication partners around brand launch to drive excitement - Advised internal communication and external marketing timeline and strategy
Style Guide
The logo was inspired by the company's heritage, wherein:
The dots represent people.
The orange bar shows how Lionbridge connects them.
The connector means connecting in the connected world through translations.
A dark interface with prominently visible colored details to draw users’ attention to the key interactive zones
IO in the logo emphasizes the lion that defines the core values. It also points to the heritage when Lionbridge was written as L10NBRIDGE. Also, one and zero in L10N (industry shorthand for 'localization') could be associated with data as well as input-output.
Breaking Barriers. Building Bridges.
The brand positioning was created around Lionbridge’s biggest asset — the global network of 500,000 professionals that render passion, quality, and skill to its range of services.
The brand strategy ‘Breaking Barriers. Building Bridges.’ was the blueprint for translating the strategy into experience and design.
MVP 1.0 Homepage Design
A comprehensive revamp of the company’s digital strategy required the team to envision a new Lionbridge experience through a multilingual enterprise-level website, with an initial website launch within weeks.
This was quickly followed by several global launch activities that connected the business and brand strategy with the visual identity to assert the new brand across people, processes, and products.
Key takeaways from the project
This was the MVP version. Was it perfect? Not yet! But what makes me happy is to have created a strong foundation towards a year-long roadmap for the client to build the big North Star idea.
The future build strategy will be a series of nimble and small steps in progressive versions that will eventually lead to success through small wins.
Buyer behavior relies on how good a product or service is and not just on brand admiration.
Brand managers should talk about product innovation and excellence to make consumers love their products.
Creating a good product experience is today becoming good advertising.
Better user experience creates a better brand that is built beyond the traditional philosophical and emotional purpose.
What people I worked with have to say
" We have gotten overwhelming accolades about the rebrand from our board, people, customers, and community. The visual representation of the brand is vivid and crisp but, most importantly, differentiates who we are. I love the new imagery, but I am even more pleased with our mission and vision and overall brand strategy."
John Fennelly, CEO, Lionbridge
"Heman is the BEST! Work with HEMAN!!"
Tom Ajello, Chief Creative & Digital Officer, VIVALDI_
"I've been honored to work with- and be mentored by - the great Himanshu Bharadwaj. His leadership and knowledge of best practices in UX was the secret sauce behind the award winning Lionbridge digital platform and evergreen client relationship. His wisdom plus his supreme talent and sense of humor have brought me great joy (and success) in my career. It is not very often that one gets cross paths with a rockstar like Himan and I hope to do so again on a project in the near future."