My team and I wanted to find a solution for usability issues which were common in on-demand video streaming services at the time. Specifically, we compared the usability of both popular and niche streaming services, from Netflix to HBO Max to WOW Presents Plus, researching inclusive design considerations and creating designs for an idealized, all-in-one streaming service focused on usability and inclusivity.
Utilizing research on accessibility in streaming, we discovered a variety of pain points felt by users with various accessibility issues. Epilepsy, low-English literacy, ADHD, autism, vision, and hearing impaired users all feel overlooked and excluded from the modern streaming experience.
In addition, those without these impairments still have accessibility issues. With users streaming on a variety of devices and platforms, there is no unified mental model for the streaming experience.
Competing companies have disparate, and sometimes lackluster, UI and UX designs which often do not meet users’ mental models, leading to mistakes, confusion, and frustration.
Users both with and without disabilities are in need of more accessible solutions to streaming. The ideal streaming platform should offer elegant and standardized design patterns while tackling the wide array of usability and accessibility issues that are commonly disregarded, such as dizzying motion interactions, lack of trigger warnings, and support for low-English-literacy, ADHD, epilepsy, autism (and more).
Additionally, streaming platforms should be accessible to viewers of all ages and technological literacy, with the user experience remaining easy to understand across services. There should be one equitable, efficient, and pleasant experience across streaming.
With Joy Streaming, users can watch shows and movies across streaming providers all in one place. Through partnerships with streaming companies, users can watch on one personalized and accessibility-optimized platform while companies advertise their subscriptions as “content-unlocking” packages across the market.
Creating an elegant all-in-one service like this allows us to optimize design patterns, uniting users’ mental models for interaction while providing enhancements like customizable layouts and themes to suit individual browsing and aesthetic preferences and further accessibility features to cater to underserved markets, like those with commonly overlooked disabilities.
We wanted to consider users on both sides of the familiarity spectrum: users that have an intuitive pre-existing knowledge of streaming interfaces and users that may be new or unfamiliar with streaming altogether.
We also want to consider users that have disabilities, and emphasize equitable functionality when designing user flows and UI.
Starting out, we focused on making the user experience of finding a show as simple as possible. As we progressed in fidelity, we started to consider familiarity with existing design patterns while optimizing the UI for those with disabilities or unfamiliarity with the information architecture.
After creating our logo, color palette, and icons, we focused a lot on maintaining a clear hierarchy between font sizes and styles, utilizing specific font styles to draw the users’ eyes to things they may be trying to find on the page.
We also made sure to include alternative captions fonts which specifically help those with visual disabilities and English-learners, as well as customizability for size and style of text throughout the app.
We reduced cognitive load by cutting overwhelming UI and utilized recommendations to supplement search and browsing. Automatically tailoring to your taste, recommendations focus on content you enjoy from across your subscribed services while recommending new content from services you might like.
To create a streamlined navigation experience, we designed our platform to be fully customizable, allowing users to change the appearance of their homepage with different layouts and sizes to best suit their needs.
Catering to anyone with disabilities, we designed icons, thumbnails, and fonts for increased visibility. We also provide closed captioning for every title with fonts specifically made to help English learners and those with visual impairments.
Watch content from every service you’re subscribed to all in one place, creating a singular streaming environment and allowing you to easily find everything available to you.
When presenting our project, we received a lot of positive feedback for our idea and had a good indication that our designs would be well received in testing.
We were able to maintain a unified look across our designs and had a lot of success demonstrating our ideas.
Where we struggled at first, with visual hierarchy and browsing functionality, eventually was resolved through our solution which included a clear hierarchy, focus states, and visual balance.
Looking back, we spent a lot of time researching and brainstorming essential accessibility features and how they need to be presented on various devices for streaming; we thought it was important that any solution which aims to create a prototypical design for streaming should deeply consider the customization and settings options required.
I think the solutions we came up with would be able to help a lot of the people who currently feel left out with contemporary designs. As far as next steps go, pushing for development to complete further testing is just one step of many to make this solution feasible and viable. Not only do we need to ensure our designs are backed with evidence of improved accessibility, but we also need buy-in from streaming services.
I'd love to help with your next project and I'm always available for a chat. If you have any questions or you'd like to get in touch, feel free to contact me.
