‹#› Lost in Translation: When Interfaces Don’t Speak to Users Author: Ross Fenner, Berta Ortiz-Crespo December 2025 ‹#› Table of contents 1. Introduction 2. The problem: usability and inconsistency 3. The importance of consistency 4. The solution: a shared foundation 5. Design systems as a building block: atomic design 6. From structure to usability 7. Learning from global leaders 8. Case studies: how evidence helps to shape a design system 9. Conclusion: turning design into strategic impact ‹#› Introduction Digital products succeed when they are easy to use. For users in low-tech environments or with limited digital experience, a predictable interface is not a convenience but a necessity. In these contexts, a confusing menu, an unclear label, or an inconsistent button is not just a minor frustration; it becomes a functional barrier that prevents people from completing tasks, accessing information, and using essential services. This report explains how a Design System, as a shared foundation of tested components and standards, enables better design decisions, reduces rework, and supports the creation of digital products that are reliable, inclusive, and genuinely useful. ‹#› The problem: usability and inconsistency As digital products grow, small inconsistencies accumulate. Decisions made in isolation, under time pressure, or without shared standards introduce design and technical debt. This creates three major obstacles for both users and teams: • Costly Rework: Teams repeatedly redesign basic elements such as buttons, forms, and navigation patterns that already exist elsewhere, wasting time and resources that could be spent solving real user problems. • User Inconsistency: Users must relearn how each new tool or feature works, increase cognitive load and creating confusion, particularly for people who already feel uncertain about using digital technology. • The Ripple Effect: Without a system, even small updates, such as a brand change or a bug fix, must be manually applied across many screens and products, slowing delivery and increasing the risk of errors. ‹#› The importance of consistency Consistency is not simply about making interfaces look the same; it is about making them behave in predictable ways. When users learn how a toggle, a button, or an icon works, they expect the same logic wherever they encounter it. Familiar patterns reduce mental effort and lower the barrier to entry, especially for users who may feel intimidated by technology. Without shared standards, similar functions are implemented differently across products, forcing users to switch between mental models and increasing the likelihood of mistakes. A Design System provides a single source of truth that aligns interaction patterns, labels, and behaviours with users’ real- world expectations, building confidence and trust. ‹#› The solution: a shared foundation Human-Centred Design offers a way to address this fragmentation through a Design System: a shared library of proven components, patterns, and rules that communicate clearly, behave predictably, and scale efficiently. In low-digital-literacy contexts, this shared foundation acts as a safeguard by capturing what has been shown to work in real conditions, such as high-contrast colours for outdoor use or simplified navigation for first-time users. Because all interfaces draw from the same source, improvements made once can be applied everywhere, allowing both small usability fixes and large strategic changes to raise the quality of the entire digital ecosystem. ‹#› Design systems as a building block: atomic design A Design System translates Human-Centred Design principles into a set of modular building blocks that can be reused and combined. This atomic approach structures interfaces from foundational rules to complete user journeys, making products easier to scale and maintain while embedding accessibility and usability from the start. • Design Tokens: Core rules for colour, spacing, typography, motion, and states, ensuring contrast, legibility, and consistent interaction. • Atoms: Basic elements such as buttons, icons, and labels. • Molecules: Simple combinations of atoms, such as a labelled input with an action button. • Organisms: Larger interface sections, including navigation bars, forms, and tables. • Templates and Pages: Full layouts and real screens where components are tested together in complete user flows. By designing with these building blocks, teams move from creating one-off screens to assembling interfaces from pre-validated parts, allowing them to focus on real user problems while maintaining consistency and quality at scale. ‹#› From structure to usability Structure alone does not guarantee that an interface will work for real people. A component becomes a true design asset only after it has been tested and shown to be clear, efficient, and inclusive for the intended users. The Design System therefore follows a continuous validation cycle: Prototype, Test, Refine, Document, and Reuse. This ensures that every element is understandable at first glance, supports task completion without friction, and can be used by people with different abilities, literacy levels, and devices. Standardisation is thus based on evidence, not assumptions. ‹#› Learning from global leaders Large global organisations rely on design systems to manage complexity while maintaining high standards of accessibility and usability. Systems such as Google’s Material Design, Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines, and IBM’s Carbon Design System define clear rules for contrast, touch-target sizes, interaction patterns, and inclusive design. These systems demonstrate how predictable behaviour, tested components, and accessibility standards can be applied consistently across many products, languages, and devices. By learning from these approaches, we can adopt proven practices that support localisation, low-end hardware, and diverse user abilities, ensuring that our own digital tools remain usable and trustworthy in all contexts. ‹#› Case studies: how evidence helps to shape a design system • Technical terms: testing of the phenotyping tool for breeders (Ona) revealed that people struggled with technical terms and complex choices, and needed familiar language, guided steps, and clear feedback to feel confident using the tool, especially in low- connectivity and outdoor conditions. • Triple layout button: some pages ended up with too many buttons competing for attention. This made it hard for users to see what to do next and forced the team to repeatedly redesign the same screens. By agreeing on one clear place where the main action always appears, we now avoid this confusion and reduce the need for repeated rework. • The “data” trap: vague labels such as “Data” reduced users’ confidence to click. By splitting the term data into more buttons pointing out concrete actions, users can confidently navigate the interface. • Visual accessibility: purely visual cues without text failed on low-end devices and in bright sunlight. Users benefited from icon-plus-label patterns and high-contrast colour rules. ‹#› Conclusion: turning design into strategic impact A Design System is not only a design tool but a strategic asset. By embedding tested patterns, accessibility standards, and localisation principles into a shared foundation, the organisation builds a unified digital ecosystem that is reliable, scalable, and inclusive. Predictable interfaces build user trust, reusable components accelerate delivery, and evidence-based standards reduce long-term maintenance and rework. Treating the Design System as living infrastructure, supported by cross-functional governance and continuous user validation, ensures that digital products are not only efficient to build, but also meaningful and dependable for the people who rely on them. Slide 1 Slide 2 Slide 3 Slide 4 Slide 5 Slide 6 Slide 7 Slide 8 Slide 9 Slide 10 Slide 11