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.