How RWS refreshed a global creative platform for a new generation of users

For years, the product’s localized versions had evolved through piecemeal updates. Linguistic reviews focused on new features, while core workflows remained untouched. Over time, this created friction: terminology felt dated, stylistic choices varied by language and translations no longer reflected how creative professionals actually spoke or worked.

As competition intensified, especially from newer, cloud-native tools built from scratch, the gaps became impossible to ignore. In-country marketing teams flagged concerns around native user experience and brand perception, prompting a full linguistic and stylistic refresh across multiple markets.

This wasn’t a traditional localization exercise. The product had decades of legacy content, fragmented review processes and deeply embedded terminology. Standard linguistic testing alone wouldn’t surface real-world issues. The client needed insight from people who used the product every day and could judge language in context, not in isolation.

The approach: expertise meets lived experience

RWS designed a testing program that blended linguistic rigor with real-world usage. Native professional users, creative specialists who relied on the product daily, were recruited and rigorously vetted. Hundreds of candidates were screened to ensure deep domain knowledge, fluency and familiarity with competitive tools.

These SMEs worked directly within the live product environments, identifying linguistic, stylistic and functional issues as they appeared in real workflows. Findings were tracked in the client’s existing systems, reviewed collaboratively by RWS linguists and functional testers and resolved through structured feedback loops with product and marketing teams.

Weekly cross-functional reviews ensured alignment, while milestone-based testing allowed improvements to roll out iteratively across platforms and languages.

Throughout the engagement, RWS teams worked side by side with the client’s product, marketing and localization stakeholders – week after week, milestone after milestone. What started as a linguistic refresh quickly became something bigger: a rethink of how language quality is defined, measured and experienced by real users.

Team members who worked on the project reflected on how the approach shifted expectations on both sides.

That shift, from rules-based translation to user-led localization, became the foundation for every decision that followed.