Robert Mills
Welcome to the Fourth Wall Content Podcast. I'm your host, Robert Mills.
Actors address the audience directly by breaking the fourth wall in theatre and film. This podcast explores the fourth wall in a different sense.
We’ll share techniques, strategies, and tactics to forge meaningful connections with audiences, users, and stakeholders.
Our conversations with experienced and innovative content, UX and research practitioners will uncover the details of real projects with lessons learned along the way and outcomes of the work too.
Each episode will provide you with practical insights and actionable takeaways to help you meet user needs, connect with customers in a genuine way, or engage stakeholders meaningfully. Let’s get to it.
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Fourth Wall Content Podcast, episode eight, no less. I'm going to dive right in by introducing my next wonderful guest and that is Nia Campbell. Nia is a senior content designer at Content Design London. They work on client projects and train people around the world in foundation and advanced content design. Since October 2022, Nia has been supporting a team in central government to help make sure that a new service provides a good experience for Welsh language users. Nia's background is in designing health and social care information, and she's worked with national charities like Marie Curie and Scope. Nia, welcome to the podcast. I am so pleased you're here.
Nia Campbell
Thanks for having me, Rob.
Robert Mills
Great. I am going to dive straight in because I know there's lots of interesting and good stuff we want to cover. And I'll start with the question I always ask at the start of the episodes, which is who is the audience or the user that is going to be the focus of the conversation or the project that we're going to talk about today?
Nia Campbell
Yeah, so the audience is Welsh language users. I always say users instead of Welsh speakers, because this is not just about speaking Welsh. My mum, for example, understood Welsh but couldn't speak it. So at home, we spoke Welsh with my dad. My mum was still a part of that conversation but spoke in English. So I think it's about acknowledging that some people will speak it, some people will read it, some people write it, but we've all got sort of different proficiency, I guess.
Robert Mills
That's great. Thank you. And this is definitely a topic close to my heart as a Welsh person living in Wales. I know some Welsh, I'm by no means fluent. I've learned it in different ways over the years so I really like that distinction of, you know, the kind of the nuances or the context of people's individual understanding and circumstances so that was brilliantly articulated, thank you.
I just want to check one thing actually before we get into the details of the work and so on. Were you the only Welsh speaker on the team and the project that we're going to focus on?
Nia Campbell
Yeah, so this is not the first time I've been the only Welsh speaker, and it does come with its share of problems. Last year, while we both contributed some chapters to the Trio Writing Handbook by the Centre for Digital Public Services. I actually called my chapter, could you just translate this quickly, because I think it's really common for, you know, Welsh speakers, they'll be on a project or part of a team. You know, Welsh is a legal requirement, it's protected by law in Wales, which means that information in public in the public sector has to be available in Welsh and English. So it often falls to the Welsh speakers on the team to translate things, you know, and sort of be responsible I suppose, you know, solely responsible for the Welsh language things they need to produce. But translation is a skill, you know, we, people train in translation. It's just not, it's not that easy, you know, just because you speak Welsh, it doesn't mean that you can translate it well. On my project, for example, we have very technical and legal language, which, you know, I would never be able to do that justice, translating it, which is why we work with a professional translation team.
Robert Mills
And I'll definitely link to that book in the show notes so thank you for mentioning that because yeah, there's some really great insights there into creating user-centered bilingual content and some kind of processes like trio writing to do so. That's a really interesting position to be in as the sort of only Welsh speaker and you know the kind of expectation of others and what they may ask of you that's reasonable or otherwise. What were some of the challenges that you've experienced firsthand when you are the only kind of well speaker on a project?
Nia Campbell
Yeah, I suppose that there's, there's that sort of feeling of responsibility. You know it is quite a big sort of feeling, you know, feeling like well, I have to be responsible and make sure that everything is completely correct and accurate. You know I'm sure we've all seen those stories where they come up in the BBC where it's like a road sign that’s been translated incorrectly and, you know, people are angry about it. You know these different things and I think that there's a bit of a fear of getting Welsh wrong as well. You know it is a legal requirement. So I think people feel a bit nervous around it, but I think Welsh speakers in organisations have a pot to play but I don't think everything should sort of fall to them.
Robert Mills
I definitely want to come back to this whole notion of fact even that Welsh language is a legal requirement because I think that's an interesting starting point for some organisations. But just to kind of linger a little bit on on the roles within organisations and translation more generally. Some organisations will have translators within their teams, some outsource it and you know, and so on. There's a lot of different kinds of setups for how that can work and translation is always an interesting process to be a part of. And it's always insightful learning how different organisations approach translation and where it fits within their workflow. They each have their own considerations I suppose, depending on you know the makeup of their organisation and the content they’re creating and the users and so on. And so, you know, there are some common approaches to translation. Can you share any problems or challenges that you've experienced or observed through your work in relation to what we might consider the traditional approach to translation?
Nia Campbell
Yeah, sure. So, the traditional approach tends to be that the design and work is done in English because, you know, the team is usually made up of non-Welsh speakers, and it's all translated into Welsh right at the end. One of the biggest problems that I found at central government with this is that it means that you're heavily reliant on translation teams. So teams will often like wait right until the end until the content is signed up in English, and then ask for it to be translated in bulk. So, this can mean that translation teams are sort of really working to capacity, and you know that they're not able to be sort of more agile and work with teams, you know, as they might iterate content, you know, as they're doing research and testing and that kind of thing. So it's quite, it's quite a rigid sort of process. And it does also cause delays.
So, one of the problems that we have so I'll give a shout out to my team and I work with a brilliant team at Justice Digital. We are working on modernising lasting powers of attorney. One of our sort of concerns with this sort of traditional way of translating is it's fine for now so everything's designed in English. There's a bit of a sort of gap, while it all gets translated and then we sort of upload it into production. But once the service is live, you know, we will need to ensure that the Welsh and English are both there. So, you know, there could be sort of delays and instead of working out how to manage this really, I would say that, yeah, there's usually for teams especially who work in an agile way, they, you know, work in maybe short sprints, but the sort of translation side of that seem like it sort of pulls work out.
Robert Mills
I've seen the same setup myself quite a few times as well, with translation being one of the very last if not the last workflow stage before sort of publish. I agree that it puts a lot of pressure on and it just doesn't treat both the languages with the same level of effort and user centred thinking. I worked on a project last year and we found a similar thing where there was sort of, you know, okay we've done all this, you know, we've done all this kind of research with the users and testing on the English language now just get translated because we're ready to go. And so we we then reworked the workflow and brought in translation earlier in the process and trio writing so we brought in the translate into the writing process and it was really interesting task because we were creating the Welsh content together, myself a translator and a user researcher and in later sessions myself, a translator and another content designer within the organisation. But what was surprising to me was by focusing on the English and Welsh by focusing on the Welsh, which is being considered the second language we actually improve the English language as well, because we're really getting to the nitty gritty and the nuances of, you know, if we, if we translate that sentence kind of like for like as much as you can then you know in English, it was like eight words, and in Welsh it was maybe 12-13 words, you know, so the sentence was much longer and then suddenly the structure of the content started to be influenced by the words, which is really interesting. So we were kind of editing and refining English content whilst working on the Welsh language content. And that was such, it just didn't cross my mind because we'd made, spent so much time on English language content and so you know that was such a great learning and outcome to then be able to sort of convince others as to why, you know, putting the second language, not second, was really worthwhile, you know, and yes it takes time and effort but it's worthwhile for the user and the content at the end of it all.
Nia Campbell
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's really good to hear that. Definitely seems to be a big push at the moment to, you know, include Welsh in that earlier stage. I spoke to somebody a little while ago who's actually taking a Welsh first approach to their project, which is lovely, you know, and it means that the needs of Welsh language users are considered at the start, you know, they're not an afterthought. It's not like, oh yeah, you know, we need to sort of add this maybe function or something like, you know, like being able to toggle between languages is a very important thing for Welsh language users, you know, and you're considering all these things up front, you know, and like you said, how the language works, you know, it's structured differently. If you're working on a service, which has conditional content, you know, it's pulling things through. It's not going to be the same, and you do need to consider these things up front.
Robert Mills
We were really getting into the details of like specific words. So one word was verified because the content was around applying for funding. And so verified was the process, you know, you have to get verified. And the translator said that doesn’t really translate that well into Welsh so we end up using checked there. But then we also changed verify to check the English language because like well that's just like clearer language anyway. So, you know, some ways we were changing just individual words and sometimes we were really sort of removing quite a bit from the English language. We had something in English which is you will need to follow in. That translator was just like, can't we just say you will need and we were like, yes, we can. That's better. Thank you. So it was really, you know, having a fresh eyes on the English language really, you know, really did make such a difference and it impacted on the link text and all sorts of know different components and parts of the English language content were improved through it. So it just goes to show that, you know, you give equal prominence then everybody benefits really, however, you're kind of accessing the services.
But there's a couple of times that we've mentioned, you know, the kind of legal requirement and I think that's a really interesting fact and a really interesting circumstance that Welsh organisations have to comply with. Because I suppose that forces those organisations to be compliant. They don't have a choice. It's a legal requirement. And that's perhaps not the most motivated or positive reason for wanting to invest in Welsh or bilingual content, you know, because you have to, as opposed to really wanting to. With that in mind, and I've got a feeling I know what your answer is going to be, but you never know. Do you think that Welsh should be more than a legal requirement? And if so, you know what are the sort of reasons for that opinion?
Nia Campbell
The problem with looking at Welsh as just a legal requirement is that you forget the people behind it, you know, you are just looking at it from a business perspective, instead of thinking about Welsh language users, and you know it's it sort of removes the human aspect and makes it more of a sort of business need, I suppose. You know, when we forget that there are a whole load of people out there, they just want to carry out that, you know, go about their day using the language that they prefer, which could be Welsh, it could be English. But when we, when we sort of forget this and we just sort of brand it as, oh, it's a legal requirement, then we're not really thinking about our users. And that's one of the really nice things from working on this project, at Justice Digital, is that everybody's been really passionate about making sure that we get the experience right for Welsh language users, that it's, you know, it's the same, and it works really well for them.
Robert Mills
I'm just intrigued as well, because we're thinking about how to make the Welsh version of content, you know, user-centred and give it the same kind of, what I suppose approach it in the same way with some of the content design tasks that we might do in terms of identifying user needs and things like that. And in particular, testing. You know, it's a really important part of the process and the work that we do. Have you ever tested Welsh language content, or Welsh translated content? And if so, I imagine there was quite a lot of learning from that?
Nia Campbell
So that's been one of our biggest focuses, is that we've, unfortunately, we didn't have sort of people power to be able to design the content in both languages at the same time. So we have taken a slightly different approach where we are testing all of the Welsh content. And we're not doing this to check that the translation team has done a good job, you know, it's nothing like that. It's just to make sure that the user experience is just as good as it is in English.
And it's been really interesting. So we've actually managed to run bilingual sessions. So people actually get the choice of which language they want to speak in the session. The user research on the project has been amazing. You know, I think we were both a bit out of our comfort zones. So one thing we did start off with was to get my brother who's a Welsh speaker on a call with us, just so that everybody could sort of hear how the language sounds. We could have a go at sort of switching between the languages in a session with me sort of translating back to the user researcher. We found that we actually got into the swing of it. And what was really lovely was when we were giving our users, these Welsh language users, a choice of which language they wanted to speak, you know, sometimes they would go Welsh, sometimes English, sometimes a mix of the two. But one of them was saying how nice it was because, you know, we're asking them to read this content in Welsh. But often, you know, they have to sort of switch to English to sort of say what they're thinking about it. But, you know, this way they could read it in Welsh. There wasn't, they didn't have to switch. They could just speak about it in Welsh then.
Another thing, a real benefit that we found from testing the Welsh content was that we were also testing the English at the same time. We were asking people, so on our service, you can toggle quite seamlessly on every single page between Welsh and English. So part of our testing was to ask users to compare the two as well. So it means that we've actually been able to make some changes to the Welsh content. But also, as you were saying before, you know, it's about it actually affects the English as well. We found some places where we could simplify the English content. We even found a page where the Welsh content tested better than the English because in English there were some, there were certain sort of legal terms that we had to use. But in Welsh, I don't think we had the same terms, so it just, you know, it was a bit easier to understand. Yeah, so it's been brilliant. It's been really insightful. And like I was saying, you know, it's not about sort of checking on the work of the translators, of course, you know, we trust them and they do brilliant work. But it's just about the experience of it and sort of taking people through the service as a whole.
Robert Mills
I think the fact that you mentioned that, you know, we weren't kind of checking on the translators or testing the quality of their work. That's quite insightful in itself because we would never frame the English content in that way. Like, oh, we know we weren't testing the quality of the, you know, the work of the people who wrote the content. So the fact that, you know, there's almost that has to be stated is insightful, I think, as to the effort and the investment that's, you know, that's needed. You know, the sort of work that you're doing to kind of push things along in a really positive way. But I just in my head, I just assumed it was going to be, and I know you should never assume, but I did. But I just assumed it was going to be purely Welsh language. It was really interesting that you said actually, you know, they can toggle and they might sort of read it in Welsh and talk in English or they might do the whole thing in Welsh. And that's really interesting because that shows that it's not necessarily one or the other or straightforward. The way people consume content and the sort of journeys they take themselves on are perhaps a bit more complex than sometimes we, you know, we design for. And even, you know, getting your brother involved at the start so they can just, you know, hear the language and things. That really sounds like a small thing, I think. But I can imagine it's quite impactful and really shows the, I guess the effort and the sort of motivation for genuinely trying to make things, you know, as good in Welsh as they are in English and serve those services equally to the users. So that was super interesting. Thank you for sharing that.
Nia Campbell
Yeah, linked to that actually, Rob, one of the one of the needs that we found that was different for Welsh language users is the toggle feature. What we found, especially on a service that is so sort of full of legal terms, people really like being able to toggle. So they might want to sort of check a word in English. And I think that there was some research from the Centre for Digital Public Services before that showed that the toggle feature as well was really helpful for Welsh learners. So it's something that, you know, you might feel like you want to read the content in Welsh, but you know, I'm fairly sure about some words so you can switch the English. Yeah, so I think that's the main sort of need that we found that is different between Welsh language users and English language users.
Robert Mills
I love how all that stuff sort of comes up when you're maybe not expecting it and it's like, Oh, yeah, well, of course they would want that or need that or do that. But it's, you only know when you know, I suppose. But with, I guess, testing and just involving Welsh language users in any kind of broader research activities. So testing interviews, whatever that may be. Are there any kind of best practices you think for including Welsh language users in your research?
Nia Campbell
Some of the things we've learned, we've learned by sort of, you know, making a small mistake. One of the main things was that if you're going to involve Welsh language users is to make sure that all of your comms are available in Welsh. So, you know, if you're emailing, if you've got like a sign up form, consent forms for research, we found that when we haven't provided these in Welsh, people were asking, you know, and they were sort of expecting it. So I think that's sort of, you know, just good practice to make sure that you are being consistent and thinking about, you know, their experience of engaging with you really.
The other thing that we found was that when we were talking about testing Welsh content, some people were a little bit nervous and they would sort of say, oh my Welsh is not good enough. And sometimes we have to give them a bit of encouragement and say, you know, just to remind you, we're testing the content, not your Welsh, you know, this is all about making sure that the Welsh works for as many people as possible. So I think sometimes, yeah, just a little bit of encouragement and help.
Then I think the last thing that, you know, it's okay to not have all the answers or to not get things completely perfect the first time. There's a bit of worry sometimes around, you know, needing to get everything correct with Welsh. You know, nobody wants to get pulled up by the Welsh Language Commissioner or end up on the news because they've, you know, they've translated something incorrectly. You know, obviously we have to sort of check our work and there is a level of quality that we should be providing. But I would just say that, you know, if you do get something wrong, it's okay. Like, you know, people are very forgiving. Welsh people are lovely generally. Like, you know, I think that what we found is that people are chuffed that we've sort of invited them and that we are trying our best. So I'd say like, yeah, don't be scared to sort of experiment, if it doesn't work or if you get something wrong, just say sorry and move on. And I think, yeah, I think that's been something that's come out from this work as well.
Robert Mills
And also we get things wrong in English, but maybe we're not so worried about that. You know, it shouldn't really be any different, should it? Like any work, any language, you know, is privy to mistakes and needing to be iterated on. So again, it's interesting that there's almost that, you know, a different feeling around Welsh and, you know, in terms of expectations and how it should be handled.
I guess with that type of worry in mind, with the fact that, you know, you have to be compliant and, you know, just concerns around, oh, well, it's going to be twice as much work if it's two languages and all those kind of things that can be a bit of a demotivator or a bit of a concern for people. And I've seen it myself as well. It can be a challenge to convince organisations why, you know, they should invest in Welsh language content as much as English and, you know, and it can be a challenge to support them in making those changes and, you know, doing that research and maybe doing trio writing and things like that. And I know from previous chats that you and I have had that you've set up, to kind of help organisations with all of these things that we've talked about so far in this conversation, you've set up a cross government meetup for people designing Welsh products and services. And I would love it if you could just take a little bit of time to talk a bit more about that, you know, what it is and how that's going and anything else you might want to share.
Nia Campbell
The reason that I set it up was that I was sort of hearing about different teams, mostly at central government, who are maybe struggling a bit with Welsh language provisions. So one team especially they sort of said, Oh, the Welsh language team just don't have capacity to support us right now. So we're going to have to wait quite a while. Is there anything you could sort of help us with? Again, that's the sort of being the only Welsh speaker sort of problem there. But yeah, one thing that I observed was that until you sort of start working on a project that requires Welsh or start sort of maybe reviewing something, you don't realise the provisions that you need. So I set this up really just as a way for anybody working on Welsh language products or services across governments, you know, Welsh government, CDPS, central government to just come together and talk about some of the challenges because I think that there are sort of commonalities across different projects and different ways that people are approaching them.
So like I mentioned earlier, somebody is approaching a new project with a sort of Welsh first approach, which is lovely. And it's just it's basically just an hour for us to get together and chat about things. So it's every two weeks on a Monday. And we talk about all sorts of things like how do you involve or recruit Welsh language users for research and how to get teams to care about Welsh because sometimes it's just that legal requirement, isn't it? Different sort of ways of dealing with the slight negativity that you can get sometimes, which is, you know, well, we don't have many Welsh language users, so it's not that important, you know, that kind of thing. Last week for the first time, we actually had a speaker. So Erin Warner from Land Registry came along to talk about they have new guidance on how to create a Welsh service in their service manual. So Erin came along to talk about how that came about and the work that they're doing around that, which was great.
Yeah, so if anybody does want to join us, it's just online. They just need to get in touch with me and I'll add them to the invites every two weeks. Yeah, and it's just a really nice chance to get to know people. So we've had people from we've got people from Welsh government. We've got somebody from Cardiff University who's been coming along, CDPS. It's been it's been really nice to just connect with others who are facing facing similar challenges, but also really passionate about getting it right as well.
Robert Mills
We'll definitely linked to the contact channel of your choice in the show notes so people can get in touch. But I've no doubt that that'll be of interest to others. I just want to before I get into my last question, I just want to make a side note to say how commendable is the work that you're doing, like the work that you're personally taking on and the things that you're personally establishing and leading to improve all these things we talked about today around Welsh language. It's easier not to do things than to do things in lots of circumstances. And I think it, you know, it really needs to be noted that, you know, you can tell, not just in this conversation, but I know when we've spoken previously and when we've kind of met at events and things, you can tell your passion for wanting to make a positive change and improve things. And so, that's highly commendable. So yeah, like huge thanks to you for everything that you're doing within the community and being so willing to share it as well and, you know, and involve others in, in a way that's meaningful to their own needs as well. So yeah, thank you for that. It's, you know, it's a huge credit to you.
Nia Campbell
Thanks Rob. I mean, massive shout out to my team like they are, at central government they are, you know, really passionate as well and you know they do want to make that service as best as it can be in Welsh so yeah huge thanks to them as well. It's been really good working with them.
Robert Mills
It's going to be really interesting, you know, a few months and even years I think just to see how all these changes kind of take hold and how it kind of evolves so maybe there's a follow up episode in this you never know. It feels like there's a lot that could, you know, we could keep digging into and and checking back on and things but but mindful of time and so on I'm gonna bring us to our last question, same question, same question I always finish every episode with. And it's going to put the spotlight on you a little bit. And it's can you think of a time when you've been the audience, or you've been the user. And what have you maybe watched or read or listened to or you know experienced or interacted with that might have provoked the reaction or stirred in emotion, and it can be work related or otherwise. A pretty broad question.
Nia Campbell
Yeah, it's funny that this question comes up actually because I did a talk, which was called when you become the user. So it's something that I've experienced in quite a big way I would say, and I used to work at Marie Curie, and the end of life charity. One of my main jobs there was to review content for unpaid carers. So these are people who are, you know, caring for somebody maybe with a terminal illness or somebody at the end of their life and the content covered everything from, you know, practical tips, sort of looking after somebody when they're in bed to, you know, the more emotional side of finances as well. And that kind of thing. My mum was living with a terminal illness when I was working there and when I finished my contract with Marie Curie I actually moved home to help care for my mum. I think the main thing that I found was that, you know, I've been sort of reading and reviewing all of this content. So I, I sort of, you know, I had these ideas of what I should be doing what I could do. But until you're actually in that situation, content can only do so much like, you know, you are, you are faced with different sorts of problems and dilemmas, everybody's situation is so unique. And, and, yeah, I guess it was a, it was a strange time you know I was going through a lot, losing my mum, but also sort of thinking about it, you know, sometimes it's hard to take your content design hat off. You're always sort of looking at things and, and yeah, assessing and I suppose I was always thinking gosh I can't believe I was reviewing all of this information. And now I'm in that situation myself. Yeah, just thinking back to hearing carer's experiences, you know, when, when you, when I was listening. I couldn't imagine what that would feel like. And then I'm suddenly in that situation myself. But yeah, I guess, I guess something that I learned was that content can only ever do so much. So we just don't know what somebody is going to go through.
Robert Mills
I love doing this podcast and chatting to so many amazing people and really getting into the details of like their projects and their work and their processes. But I think this last question is my favourite of all, because the answers are always so broad. I'm really grateful that you shared something so personal there. So thank you for that and kind of bringing that to the conversation.
But it's just, it's almost there's so much I want to say about that I don't actually know where to start I'm a little bit speechless, which is not good when you're hosting a podcast, but I think the main thing that was in my mind as you were talking through that is as content designers we, you know, we talk a lot about empathy, you know, being empathetic and putting ourselves in the user's shoes and understanding the user and what's their need and what, what their motivations and pain points and we have all those conversations and you know we try and find data and evidence to support that and and speak to those people. But unless you're that person with your own experience and you're feeling you're under the weight of that emotion, there is only so much that we can do and I totally you know that resonated there's only so much the content can do so that's such an interesting example in terms of just being on the other side, so really, there's a lot there to kind of ponder I think in terms of the work that we do and the impact it can have and, and then the experiences we have in different circumstances users and as an audience and so on so yeah very much thank you for sharing that example I think it's, yeah, that's going to sit with me for a while to think about the work that we do and I guess the importance of it really.
So I've definitely spoken far too much this episode so I think it's probably time to bring it to a close. Although, Nia, I do hope that we can continue this conversation outside of this episode. Meet up again in person and I'm really interested in the work that you're doing and keep an eye on that and share it as well. But thank you so much for spending time with me to talk through your work, talk to those experiences and share your knowledge. It's been a real pleasure.
Nia Campbell
Thanks for having me, Rob.
Robert Mills
Thank you for listening to the Fourth Wall Content podcast. All episodes, transcripts and show notes can be found ay fourthwallcontent.com. Good luck with your content challenges and I hope you can join us next time. Bye for now.
