Case Study · 02
Years of evidence, two rename attempts, built for billions of users.
For years, our user research told the same story: people did not understand the language we used to describe third-party data and frequently misidentified what our third-party data controls actually did.
One of these controls carried legalistic language for most of its existence. First, called “Data from partners,” and later, “Activity information from ad partners.”
The core issue was a tradeoff between legally precise language vs. less comprehensive but more understandable plain language. Historically, our legal team had naturally pushed for strict, technically precise scoping. “Partners” and then “Ad partners” were accurate descriptions of who shared the information covered by the control at the time. However, our research showed time and time again that legal precision and user comprehension were pulling in opposite directions.
As the lead content designer on this project, I spent multiple years and made two distinct attempts to push for plain-language naming. During the first attempt, I secured resourcing for and led cross-organization-sponsored research between the ads and privacy orgs. This established baseline research on how users conceptualized this data, which enabled me to propose naming frameworks that better matched user understanding of the data.
In the second attempt, a product scope expansion gave me a new opportunity to push for a rename that better aligned with user mental models. I led a team of content and product designers to redesign the setting, driving the UX writing and setting information architecture. I partnered with our user research team to synthesize our massive backlog of existing research. And finally, I drove stakeholder alignment & VP approvals to successfully launch a rename based on user insights and understanding.
The first attempt was a lesson in what not to do. I had run the research, built a business case for simpler language, and promptly hit a legal wall. Legal insisted the name reflect the exact technical scope, arguing that “ad partners” served that purpose. I didn’t get the rename I wanted on that round, but I didn’t let the issue fall off my radar either, and I was ready to move quickly when another opportunity arose to redesign the setting.
When the product scope expanded to cover activity beyond ads, the calculus changed. Using ads language in the name of a control that no longer exclusively covered ads was no longer viable. This was my opening. I rapidly synthesized the existing body of evidence from multiple studies across multiple years, including original research I had run, to build a confident, well-documented recommendation.
This time I brought legal in early, not as a gatekeeper to manage, but as a genuine collaborator. I walked them through the research history, the user comprehension evidence, and my recommendation: “Activity from other businesses.” Research had shown users consistently understood “businesses” language more intuitively than “partners” or “advertisers,” even if it wasn’t a perfect technical match for scope.
As a result, legal became my strongest advocate in the room, pushing back against stakeholders who wanted to revert to technically precise but less understandable alternatives. Both of us drew on our shared history of what happened the last time precision won over comprehension. My insistence on plain language paid off when we went to brief regulators, where the setting’s new name and UX were well-received.
Because we planned to do a 2-phase rollout, this meant introducing the complexity of carrying 2 different sets of terminology for the same concept across our products for a fairly prolonged period. To get ahead of this, I built an internal content governance playbook to document the rationale behind every terminology decision, the nuances of the dual-terminology transition period, and guidance for teams applying the framework going forward.
Getting 50+ impacted surfaces updated meant dozens of partner teams needed to execute changes they didn’t initially plan for. To help streamline, I created and socialized a briefing deck that gave every team the rationale, terminology rules, and guidance for implementing changes to their surfaces. The result: Every team quickly aligned on the changes needed and shipped on our established timeline.
The new naming launched globally — first to 3.6 billion users in phase 1 regions, with over 50 surfaces updated to reflect the change. Phase 2 regions would follow in the future, extending the same terminology to billions more users.
The before and after represent years of research, two attempts, and a sustained case for putting user comprehension ahead of technical jargon.