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Case Study 02  ·  Datasite · 2026
Bringing Complex Deal Workflows to Mobile
DatasiteMobileEnterprise SaaSLocalizationAI / ML
TL;DR
Led mobile design at Datasite to close the gap between desktop and mobile deal workflows. Shipped document translation across three progressive releases (v4.0–4.2) — now one of Datasite's top revenue-driving AI features with 2,319 projects enabled and 50k+ pages translated per month. Currently in research for AI-assisted mobile redaction, informed by customer interview insights and an early concept prototype.
Business Problem

Deal professionals do critical work on desktop that should follow them to mobile — but mobile has been a second-class citizen for complex deal workflows.

59% of mobile users are Reviewers, and 80% of mobile events happen in the fileroom — yet complex actions like document translation and redaction weren't available on mobile at all. Users who translated documents on desktop couldn't even access those translations in the mobile app. Cross-border deal teams were being forced back to a laptop to do work that should have followed them. This case study covers two features tackling the same problem: translation (shipped) and redaction (in research).

Desktop work stranded on desktop
Users who translated or redacted documents on desktop couldn't access or continue that work in the mobile app at all
No in-app translation path
Reviewers encountering foreign-language documents had no way to initiate translation without switching to desktop
Low feature discoverability
Even on web, most reviewers glazed over the translation feature entirely — mobile was an opportunity to surface it contextually
Design Approach

The Datasite mobile app: your deal room in your pocket

Deal professionals can't always be at their desk. The Datasite mobile app is the Swiss Army knife of the deal room — a tool for reviewing, managing, and acting on documents wherever the deal takes you. The features we're building for mobile aren't desktop ports. They're scoped for the moments between meetings, the car rides, the airport gates.

1
Right feature, right scope
Not every desktop capability belongs on mobile in its full form. We ask: what's the high-value action a user needs to take right now, away from their desk? Then we design exactly that — nothing more.
2
AI as the mobile unlock
Complex tasks like redaction feel risky on a small screen — what if you miss something? AI changes that calculus. When the system does the heavy lifting of identifying what needs action, the cognitive load drops enough that mobile becomes viable.
3
Every action is a revenue event
Both translation and redaction add files to the data room — and every page is billable. Designing features that are easy to activate on mobile isn't just good UX. It directly drives project value and gives sales a story to tell.
Feature 01 — Translation

Shipped across three progressive releases

Translate any PDF from the fileroom
Users can select any PDF document for translation during a mobile session, choose a target language from a dropdown, preview the translated output before committing, and then generate the full translated document — all without leaving the app.
Translations repository in the fileroom
A dedicated translations repository accessible from the fileroom — a single place where all translated documents live, regardless of whether the translation was initiated on mobile or desktop.
Language switch when viewing a document
When viewing a document in its original language, users are presented with an option to load the translated version directly — reducing steps between encounter and resolution.
Proactive translation prompts
Contextual prompts that surface automatically when a user previews a document not in their native language — addressing the discoverability gap identified in both web and early mobile behavior data.
Push notifications for completed translations
Added push notifications to alert users when a translation is ready — directly addressing the 10% drop-off pattern where users initiated a translation and left the app.
Bulk translation capacity
Expanded the experience to support translation of more than 10 documents at once — addressing the most common volume constraint identified through behavioral analysis of the v4.0 cohort.
Feature 01 — Translations Prototype

Clickable Prototype

Click through the translation flow — from selecting a document in the fileroom to previewing and generating a translated version.

Outcomes

Usage, revenue & behavioral signals

2,319
Projects with AI Translations enabled — one of the top AI features driving revenue
50k+
Pages translated per month across all platforms as of Q3 2025
150+
Projects per month leveraging the feature as of Q3 2025
~50% of projects with translations enabled had a mobile session — confirming that mobile is a meaningful surface for the feature
~50% of users who translate on mobile go on to preview the translated file directly in-app — the preview-before-commit pattern working as designed
10% of users leave after initiating a translation and return later — push notifications shipped in direct response to this pattern
Sales teams are actively using translations to drive revenue — confirmed by sales leadership, with every translated page being billable
Feature 02 — Redaction

In Research: AI-Assisted Mobile Redaction

Redaction came up across three user interviews with a consistent theme: simple, quick redaction on mobile would be useful in a pinch, but full-featured redaction belongs on desktop. This is the same design question that shaped the translation work — which desktop workflows have a meaningful mobile use case, and what does an appropriately scoped version of them look like?

This work is in active research. The prototype below represents early concept exploration — not a shipped feature.
What customers told us
"A colleague on Project Vineyard needed to redact something while in a car and had to wait until they got home. A simple tool to cover a small section of a brief document for a quick fix when away from a desktop — that would be valuable."
Sasha T., Ardea Partners  ·  Rated AI-powered redaction 4/5 in importance
"There's no way I would redact on a phone — you could miss something like a Social Security number on a small screen. But maybe an AI tool would change that, because you wouldn't need to review the result as carefully."
Michael W., Northborne  ·  Sees AI as the trust mechanism that could make mobile redaction viable
The design insight

The tension in the research is useful: users can see value in lightweight, AI-assisted redaction for simple, short documents — but not a full redaction workflow. AI is actually the key unlock here. When the system surfaces what to redact rather than requiring the user to find and mark everything manually, the risk of missing something on a small screen drops significantly. That reframes the mobile redaction problem from "can we do this?" to "how scoped should it be?"

Early Concept Prototype

This prototype explores an AI-assisted redaction flow for mobile — where the system scans selected documents and surfaces PII and financial data for the user to accept, dismiss, or adjust before publishing. Click through the screens to explore the concept.

Reflection

What this work reinforced

The most clarifying moment was realizing the core problem wasn't "add translation to mobile" — it was that users who had already done the work on desktop couldn't access it on mobile at all. Framing the problem that way changed the design priorities: the translated document repository became as important as the translation initiation flow.

The redaction research reinforces the same principle: the question isn't whether to port a desktop feature to mobile, but what the right scope of that feature is on mobile. AI changes that calculus significantly — when the system does the heavy lifting of finding what needs to be redacted, the cognitive load on the user drops enough that mobile becomes viable. That's the design space the early prototype is exploring.