Communicating with people who don’t speak our native language remains a challenge for many of us, and travel often doesn’t come into it. In the 2011 census conducted by the Office for National Statistics, which surveyed 56.1 million residents of England and Wales, statisticians received more than 600 different responses to the question ’what is your main language?’ Yet it is estimated that more than 95 per cent of the British population are monolingual English speakers.

You might be negotiating a business deal, handling an emergency or in a rush to get somewhere. There’s no doubt that sometimes it would be helpful for us all to be speaking the same language.

Advances in technology mean this could soon be a problem of the past. Waverly Labs, an innovative consumer products company created in 2014 by Andrew Ochoa, has been nominated for an award in the 2017 Beazley Designs of the Year competition thanks to its new language- translating earpiece, called the Pilot, and its accompanying smartphone app. BBC Designed spoke to Ochoa about his innovative creation.