My first real product was a multilingual media app for the Latin American market. And it’s where my UX work began. I wrote the entire app and website from scratch, in Portuguese, English, and Spanish: onboarding, error states, empty states, account screens, alerts. Every word in the interface went through me.
Writing a product end to end is where I learned something I still carry: in an interface, a word isn’t a translation detail. It’s a product decision.
The verb behind 70% of the tickets
The core feature was linking someone’s cloud storage to access their content. The action was called “import cloud.” It seemed right, until we looked at the support tickets.
The verb “import” suggested their content would be moved or replaced. A lot of people froze, afraid of losing what they already had: they’d open a ticket before clicking, or click, panic, and open one after. The problem was never the feature. It was the verb.
I changed “import cloud” to “add cloud” across all three languages. Same action. But now it was clear: this added, it didn’t replace.
~70%
drop in tickets related to that feature
Beyond one verb: the whole product
The “import” swap was the clearest example, but the work was constant and broad. I wrote and refined microcopy across the whole journey (onboarding, confirmations, error states, empty states, account screens), keeping the same tone and terminology in Portuguese, English, and Spanish.
In a product used across several markets, consistency isn’t fussiness: it’s what lets someone trust they understand what they’re seeing, whatever the language.
When data sharpens the content
My work didn’t stop at the interface. I also handled the brand’s content (newsletter, blog, and email), tracking click-through rates to understand what sparked interest and adjusting each edition accordingly. The result was concrete: subscription growth and more app downloads.
Strategic content and an authentic voice weren’t at odds. They added up.
What this product left me with
In an interface, the word is part of the product.
This is where my way of working was born. Before it, I saw language as translation, carrying a message from one language to another. Writing a whole product, and watching a single verb cut 70% of the tickets, showed me something else: a word guides, reassures, or alarms — and that shows up directly in support volume, trust, and who comes back. I’ve carried that into every project since.