//Problem
Contentstack's taxonomy had no concept of locale-specific terms. For global customers like DeLonghi (multilingual recipe navigation), AFKLM, and Verizon, this was a hard blocker.
//FYI
What is Taxonomy?
Product Designer
Role
8 months
Duration
//Goal
Empower global teams to manage culturally relevant taxonomies by Providing a centralized, Locale-Aware framework that drives accurate tagging and faceted search across international sites.
//Scope
PM: Martin, Chris
Design: George, Prashant
ENgg: Manish, Sagar
Research, Insights & Pain points
Addressing the gap
Our taxonomy is in English, but our editors aren't; so tagging content correctly is guesswork.
"
Customer Quotes
French-speaking editors would see "Flights to Europe" while they needed to tag content with
"Vols vers l'Europe."
"
//Research
Sessions with customers.
Condens reports & older documents.
Sessions with customer success managers, Internal.
//Key customers
DeLonghi, Moncler, UniEuro, Verizon, Miele
//Insights
Most of our customers have multilingual requirements which is addressed via localization of entries but missing in taxonomies.
//Implications
This was emerging as a top competitive gap.
Inability to achieve complete localization. //Cognitive Load
Pain point #1
Forced to follow tedious workarounds to achieve localization goals. //Role Fragmentation
Pain point #2
Pain Points
Solutions, Feedback & Iterations
Filling the gap
Kickoff & Initial Exploration: Built the first Figma Make prototype for Taxonomy Localization. Shared early concepts before broader alignment.
June 2025
Design Framework | 3×3 Options Matrix: Mapped 3 CTA approaches × 3 Sync/Publish flow approaches = 9 possible interaction paths. Structured this for stakeholder decision-making rather than presenting a single solution and waiting for feedback.
July 2025
Architectural Pivot; Sync vs. Publish: I flagged the implications of 'Publish' approach; timeline, scope, unpublishing, per-language structure changes, etc. Manish confirmed: deliver Localization via Sync first.
August 2025
Metadata Design & Filter System: Debated RHS metadata vs. inline table approach for translation status. Advocated for table component aligned with Entry List patterns after Chris and George pushed for consistency.
Sept 2025
Dev Implementation Audit: Conducted a thorough design review of the implementation on dev environment. Documented all discrepancies, flagged 15+ issues across state handling, visual hierarchy, and interaction gaps. Shared with Engineering for resolution.
Nov 2025
Live on Production: Taxonomy Localization shipped to production.
Jan 2026
Shipped Taxonomy Localization from 0 to production in 7 months resolving the #1 multilingual content gap on the platform, directly unblocking global enterprise accounts including J&J, Philips, SKF & Air France-KLM contributing to a 30% YoY contract growth for one of the platform's largest and most complex customers.
Impact
Kaustubh as Product Designer
Adoption extended beyond the roadmap scaling to unsolicited enablement requests from Google, Philips, and 3 other enterprise accounts within 4 months of release.
Bonus