Terminology governance
at scale
When a product ships without shared language, every team invents their own. I built Meta's smartwatch terminology governance from scratch — 90+ terms across hardware, health, UX, and AI, with rules every writer, engineer, and localization partner could actually use.
No shared language.
Every team inventing its own.
On the smartwatch, engineering called a UI element one thing, design called it another, and PMM used a third. Localization teams were translating inconsistent source strings. Health features had terminology that needed FDA alignment. And new terms were being coined in meetings and Figma files faster than anyone could track them.
There was no terminology system. No single source of truth. No process for deciding what we call things.
I was not asked to do this. I saw the problem, scoped the solution, and built it.
Audit everything.
Then build the system.
I started by auditing every term in use across the product — hardware names, software labels, health feature terminology, UI component names, settings categories. I found inconsistencies everywhere: the same feature referred to by different names in the app, on the watch, and in marketing materials.
I met with CDs across product lines to combine and audit learnings and find patterns. I worked with localization managers to understand what was breaking in translation. I partnered with Legal and PMM to understand which names had trademark constraints.
Then I built the governance system: defined terms with approved usage and deprecated alternatives, created concrete "use this, not that" rules (not style-guide abstractions), aligned health terminology with regulatory requirements, and converged competing systems into single umbrella terms. I also built the governance process itself — how new terms get proposed, reviewed, and approved, so the system maintains itself without me.
A system that
runs without me.
Approved usage, deprecated alternatives, and context for when each applies — covering hardware, health, UX, and AI terminology across the product.
A process for proposing, reviewing, and approving new terms — so the system maintains itself and doesn't require a human lookup table.
Guidance tested across de_DE, es_ES, es_LA, fr_FR, it_IT, ja_JP, ko_KR — reducing translation rework and preventing drift across markets.
Late naming changes
virtually eliminated.
Three competing terminology systems converged into one on the smartwatch — for example, "widget" became the umbrella term, deprecating "complication" and "glanceable." Forty-four settings strings were standardized across app and hardware. Late naming changes during content lock were virtually eliminated.
Localization rework dropped — stable source strings meant fewer translation cycles. The system was adopted by adjacent teams and extended to a new AI product line.
The lesson I carried forward: if people keep coming to you with the same question, the answer isn't to keep answering — it's to build the thing that answers for you.
"Ashlee has been our steward for terminology, including preventing the team from naming regressions introduced by mistake and/or due to the product process being so lengthy."
— Product design peer"Thanks for spearheading this work and getting the team to align and document terminology. This is going to be so valuable for our team as we grow and look to stay aligned across the product."
— Content design peer