PROJECT OVERVIEW
I rebuilt Telenav’s Arabic in-car navigation right to left: mirrored layouts, Arabic type and digits, a new icon set, and written rules engineers could build from. It relaunched in GM cars across the Middle East from model year 2018.
CLIENT
Telenav
MY ROLE
Design Lead, via Plexable
SCOPE
RTL research, Arabic typography and digit rules, mirrored layouts and controls, category icon set, interface design across search and guidance, written UI behaviour rules for engineers, driver testing support, and a competitor benchmark
VALIDATION
Tested with drivers in Dubai; 23 issues found, 4 of them high severity
TIMELINE
2015 - 2017
TEAM
Delivered through Plexable with Telenav’s product team; UX research led by Maher Jilani
The context
Telenav builds the navigation inside GM cars. Its Arabic version was already on the road in the Gulf, but parts of it still read left to right and many labels had been translated word for word.
Telenav asked for a complete Arabic version: every screen rebuilt right to left with the correct Arabic type, new category icons, and written rules engineers could build from. Between 2015 and 2017 I did that across both of its systems, Denali and ARP, supported the driver testing run in Dubai, and joined a carmaker meeting as Telenav's Middle East localization expert.
My responsibility
My job was to make the Arabic build feel native rather than corrected, across both of Telenav's systems. That meant treating reading direction as a system rule instead of a per-screen fix, and writing it down so engineers could apply it without me in the room.
Maher Jilani led the UX research track, including the driver testing in Dubai and the report that came out of it. I turned its findings into design changes.
The turning point was a question of scope. Telenav had an Arabic build on the road and wanted it corrected. What the screens actually showed was that reading direction had been applied as a translation rather than as a rule.
Telenav's own 2014 tests in California showed drivers liked the English version, so the bar was already set. I argued that matching it meant a rebuild, not another pass over the labels.
CONSTRAINTS & TRADE-OFFS
Three things were fixed before I started. The product was already shipping in cars. The English version was the benchmark drivers liked. And Arabic brings its own behaviour: longer words, two styles of digits, and a different address order.
● RESEARCH & CONTEXT
The research changed what we were building
Testing with drivers turned opinion into a list, and three problems came back hardest. Parts of the Arabic build still ran left to right, which made the route hard to follow; that was rated the most serious issue. Some labels had been translated word for word instead of by meaning, and a few were still in English. Arabic and Hindi digits appeared side by side, where drivers needed one style used everywhere.
Those three set the order of the work: reading direction first, then language, then numerals.
● PRODUCT DECISIONS
Three tracks that turned a translation into a rebuild
● PRODUCT ARCHITECTURE
The blueprint and evolution
The system was flipped as a whole rather than screen by screen. Layout first: text, lists and numbers read from the right, and scroll bars moved to the right side with them. Then controls: back and close swapped places, and any arrow that points a direction was redrawn instead of mirrored.
Those rules held across both products, Denali and ARP, and across every screen family: search and auto-suggest, place categories and details, route overview and turn lists, junction views, and the instrument cluster.
● PROCESS & EVIDENCE
Everything was written down as it went. The RTL study became the reference for how Arabic behaves on screen: how far words run before they truncate, which digit style to use, what order an address reads in, and how local road signs are set.
The Dubai sessions became a 49-page report, each of the 23 issues carrying a severity and a fix. The 2017 benchmark was recorded the same way, as a side-by-side a product team could act on rather than a set of impressions.
OUTCOMES
What shipped, and where
8
Scopes of work
Two years of work, from the first Arabic study in 2015 to the rival benchmark in 2017.
2
Systems made Arabic
Denali and ARP, both rebuilt right to left with rules engineers could build from.
23
Issues, each with a fix
Found while testing with drivers in Dubai, 4 of them high severity.
WHAT I’D IMPROVE
What changed for drivers
Routes, turn lists and search results all read in the direction Arabic drivers read, so the next move is where the eye already is.
One digit style, labels chosen by meaning, and a typeface sized for Arabic cut the time spent reading the screen.
WHAT I LEARNED
What I would carry forward
A right-to-left build is a design system problem, not a translation task. Flip the layout rules once and every screen follows.
Localization earns its keep in the details nobody lists in the brief: digits, word length, and which way an arrow points.
More work
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