Design for Diversity

Skills: UI/UX, Prototype, Visual Design & Research

Problem

At the time of the creation of this project, video chat applications such as Skype and FaceTime did not offer closed captioning. This presents an issue to the hearing impaired community, as phrases/words can be misheard or not heard at all. Many members of this community are able to read lips, but this is only to a certain extent and also leaves out those who are unable to do this. There are services that offer live interpretations of video chats, but these applications leave out the part of the community who do not know sign language which includes both deaf and hard of hearing people.

Solution

Create a real-time captioning service for video chats that can be seamlessly integrated into all live video services.

Research

The majority of our evidence comes from firsthand accounts from those who are part of the deaf and hard of hearing community. Five individuals were asked broadly what is one thing they would fix or add to their lives to better their quality of living with a hearing impairment. One participant declined to answer, while the other four all mentioned captions of some sort. Specific quotes from the four who answered are included below.

“Captions on all videos” - Grace Meno

“Captions on cell calls and FaceTime” - Ryan Meno

“Captions on people who mumble” - John Meno

“Have the closed caption feature” - MaryBeth Meno

After continuing conversations exploring and elaborating their answers, MaryBeth explained that “a louder volume doesn’t help [for my hearing loss]” and Grace echoed this saying that “turning up the volume does nothing. If anything, it makes it worse.” When presented with the idea of captioning video chats, two participants stated that it would make conference calls easier. One of these participants is a graduate student while the other works in construction. They have varying situations but a similar hearing loss and thus similar needs. These answers demonstrate that having captions in general and specifically for video calls is a real need in this community. 

When researching statistics, it was found that over 5% of the world’s population is hard of hearing. In the United States, approximately 1 in every 2 individuals over the age of 75 and 2 to 3 out of every 1,000 children have a hearing loss. This is a very large percentage of the population that would potentially benefit from our service. 

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Typography & Color Palette

Iconography

Personas