A Bit of Background to Start...
About the Company
3Play Media is a company that powers a lot of the key accessibility solutions (think captioning, translation, and audio description) on the web for individuals with disabilities.
In comparison to its competitors, 3Play thrives due to its loyal contractor base and investment in technological solutions, creating a scalable and repeatable business model that works across different verticals of the business.
About Live Captions
Gaps in technology have historically prevented individuals with disabilities from gaining equitable access to content on the web. In particular, audio and video content (podcasts, short-form video, and long-form content) becoming more popular over the past few years has only increased the barrier to access for users with disabilities.
Live captions are a form of providing access to real-time time-based media such as meetings, webinars, conferences for people who primarily have auditory disabilities, although it also helps people with cognitive disabilities comprehend content better.
Automatic Captions
Generated using artifical intelligence, have been around for more than a decade, but only partially bridge the accessibility gap for people with auditory or cognitive disabilities.
Professional (or human-generated) Captions
Created with the manual input of a human captioner either through stenography or voice writing, have historically only been available to broadcast, television-based customers.
Disrupting a Primitive Market
Our goal was to apply our scalable business model to the world of live professional captioning and web-based meetings, something no other competitors did at scale.
Especially with the onset of the pandemic, at-home quarantine and remote work accelerated the need for high-accuracy live captioning solutions, as all live meetings and events were conducted virtually and real-time text-to-speech solutions were not satisfactory enough for users with auditory disabilities. Additionally, existing human-powered live captioning solutions in the market were not scalable and extremely “high-touch”, typically used for broadcast television instead of online events.
The Timeline and Process
Our timeline was not linear, but I’ve tried my best to provide a high-level overview of what it looked like and how I was involved in the process.
About Live Captions
User research activities included:
- General web accessibility needs
- Existing publishing behavior and associated challenges
- Industry trends and organizational structures
- Audio and video user engagement analytics tracking
Design and Testing
After collecting sufficient data, I created initial mockups and prototypes based on needs we heard from our interviews with customers and contractors. We brought this back to the same set of users and conducted a series of formative usability tests to make changes to the designs.
Closed Beta Launch
Our team launched in a closed beta capacity in October of 2021.
We created a closed feedback loop using surveys in Hotjar to capture frustrations, bugs, and pain points that would inform changes to the design.
Scaling and Growing
As of May 2022, the customer base is growing exponentially. I’ve shifted my focus slightly from designing for customers and contractors to internal stakeholders, creating tools that automate key portions of their workflow to allow them to focus on scaling the platform to reach more people in the future.
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