Hulu
Project
Hulu Accessibility
Role
Designer / Researcher
Date
Fall 2018
Design Challenge Brief
“How might we design Hulu to be more accessible for people with needs or different challenges when it comes to discovering and/or viewing content?”
Context
During the Fall of 2018, SMC IxD students collaborated with Hulu to help make their products more accessible for people with disabilities or different challenges. Teams were divided into teams of four and were encouraged to recruit participants with a specific disability or need as means to focus their research. Over the span of 16 weeks, my team studied how 3 individuals live with Cerebral Palsy (CP) and how they utilize technology. Through our research process, we gained insights into how people with Cerebral Palsy interact with Hulu in both the digital and physical space. At the end, we presented our research findings and a design solution in front of company executives at Hulu’s headquarters.
The Problem
More than 1 billion people worldwide experience some form of disability. In the U.S. alone, that’s nearly 1 in 5 people or 1 in 3 households. If Hulu can’t work for all users, they are not only discriminating their user base, but also missing a business opportunity. There are currently four main types of disability affecting the use of Hulu’s product: visual, auditory, motor, & cognitive. Many technologies today are not accessible for individuals with disabilities and they often have to find creative ways or workarounds to use a streaming service like Hulu.
Cerebral Palsy (CP)
Cerebral Palsy is a neurological disorder caused by a non-progressive brain injury or malformation that occurs while the child’s brain is under development. Signs and symptoms can vary greatly, Cerebral Palsy primarily affects body movement and muscle coordination. It can also impact fine motor skills, gross motor skills and oral motor functioning.
Project Goals
1. Become familiar with how our participants currently use technology
2. Observe our participants using Hulu in their native environment by conducting in–home interviews
3. Gain an understanding of the limitations and motivations that drive or hinder our users
4. Design a solution that is not only affordable, but adapts to the users needs
User Research
We conducted secondary research, in-home interviews, empathy mapping, task analysis, and a co-creative workshop.
Secondary Research
To better understand the accessibility of video streaming, we started researching online for journal articles, tested the video streaming service on different platforms, and completed a competitive analysis. This is what we found out:
Audio Description
Unlike Hulu, Netflix currently offers audio description. You can also search for audio description content as if it were a genre on Netflix.
Navigation
The user interface is inconsistent throughout each platform. For living room and mobile devices, the home screen presents you with a vertical layout (displays 1 show or movie) compared to the web application, which is the more traditional horizontal layout (displays multiple shows).
Vertical Layout
Horizontal Alignment
In-Home Interviews
We interviewed each participant in a living room setting at home. We set a goal to better understand what technology they employ and how they use it, in search of opportunities for positive change. We spent roughly 3-4 hours total with each participant.
Task Analysis
Specific tasks were created in order to uncover pain points that our participants might encounter. As we guided them along these tasks, techniques such as a “think aloud protocol” were used to collect data. Using this research method, participants are encouraged to “think out loud” and talk us through their thought process as they are completing these tasks. We noticed that our participants also required the use of many assistive devices to complete these tasks. However, these devices are not currently compatible with Hulu or much of their in home technology, and so they were not able to fully use these tools.
Co-Creative Workshops
We allowed our participants to tap into their own imagination and creativity to envision an ideal solution to their problems with Hulu. Modeling clay was included so that they might show us a physical form that works for them personally. The purpose of this exercise was to understand the hopes and aspirations of our participants and use these findings to inform our final solution.
Empathy Mapping
After interviewing our participants, this allowed us to go back home to gather and process some of our insights.
Findings
Our ethnographic research yielded a variety of findings, specifically problems in these areas:
Visual: One common symptom of cerebral palsy is eye sensitivity. As a result reading text is very difficult. Furthermore, gradients and colors found in Hulu can be hard on the eyes for someone with cerebral palsy
Cognitive: For someone living with Cerebral Palsy, things like reading, writing, learning, and memorization are more difficult for them than the average person. This is attributed to an underdeveloped brain along with a high occurrence of seizures that further hinder their mental capacity.
Physical: While our participants exhibited many problems in different areas, we found that the most overlap was in the physical realm. Our participants all exhibited stiffness in the hands, spasticity, jumpiness, muscles that tire easily, among many other qualities.
Opportunity
Based on our findings, we saw that the greatest opportunity would be to solve for the physical problems our participants faced. Our initial concept for a solution was to design a digital remote that would live within Hulu’s existing app. Apple has an abundance of accessibility tools that we thought we could also integrate into the system.
Proposed Solution
Create a remote feature within Hulu’s existing app that has a modular and customizable interface. Furthermore, this remote feature should be able to plug into, and adapt to any assistive device that a disabled user employs.