Canvas Studio - Professional capti

Project overview

This project introduced an integration feature in Canvas Studio that allows school administrators to connect their contracted captioning vendors directly to the platform. Once integrated, educators can request human-made captions for their videos – reducing the reliance on auto-generated captions and ensuring greater accuracy and accessibility for students.

The team

1 Product Designer

1 Product Manager

2 Accessibility Engineers

3 Software Engineers

My contribution

User interviews

Design & testing

Accessibility audit

Problem statement

The Challenge

Until now, the only type of captions available were automatically generated ones, which had an accuracy of 85-90%. Professional and technical terms were often incorrect, and even simpler phrases could be inaccurate. Educators had to thoroughly review and correct these captions, which was time-consuming.

The Goal

The aim was to improve caption accuracy and reduce the time educators spent reviewing and correcting captions. Captions made by humans are more accurate, reducing the burden on teachers and ensuring that captions are readily available for students.

Research and Insights

Personas

While we did not specify detailed user personas, we focused on two clear user groups:

School admins

Who manage the integration and approve caption requests.

Educators

Who request captions for their videos.

Key problems

We conducted interviews with 8 schools across the US, involving both admins and teachers to understand their needs and challenges.

The feature was especially needed by teachers in science subjects, as their videos often contained many professional terms.
Some educators didn't have time to double-check automatic captions and either enlisted students to help or published inaccurate captions due to time constraints.
Admins needed a clear and concise dashboard to manage caption requests, as each request incurred a cost, based on the video length.

Design process

Ideation

The users had a clear vision of their needs. To fulfill these needs, the feature required three main components:

An integration interface managed by a school admin used to link their contracted vendor with the school’s Canvas Studio instance.
The caption-requesting feature used by teachers and professors.
A dashboard for admins to approve or decline caption requests.

Prototyping

We aimed to deliver clear and simple screens without any clutter. The wireframing process was brief and effective, quickly meeting all criteria. Prototypes were created in Figma.

User feedback

We conducted usability testing with the most insightful admins from our previous interviews. Initially, the dashboard was two tables, but feedback indicated this was overwhelming and too reminiscent of Excel – “we see enough Excel in a day”.

Testing revealed that a table format for new requests was overwhelming. We redesigned this part to use cards for each request, which was better received by users.

Solution

Integration interface

The interface offers the following features:

Vendor integration

Allows admins to link their third-party captioning vendors to the Canvas Studio instance.

Role management

Enables the creation and management of roles. Permissions include the auto-approval of requests, or providing only some type of services.

Caption requesting interface

The already existing caption requesting interface gets a new feature:

Professional captioning

With an easily accessible form linked to each video, teachers can specify the language and the timeframe for the vendor to deliver the captions.

Admin dashboard

The interface offers the following features:

Pending requests

A card-based layout displaying each new request with details such as video length and name, making it easier for admins to review and decide.

Processed requests

A table format for accepted and declined requests, providing a clear history and status updates.

Results and Impact

This update for Canvas Studio resulted in the following positive experiences in the affected schools:

Enhanced accuracy

The human-generated captions significantly improved accuracy, reducing the need for teachers to review and correct them.

Streamlined workflow

Teachers saved considerable time by not having to check and edit captions, allowing them to focus on other tasks.

Legal compliance

The feature ensured compliance with legal requirements for educational video captions in the United States.

Next steps

To ensure continuous improvement, the team plans to gather ongoing feedback to refine and enhance the feature further. Additionally, the aim is to explore the development of new functionalities, such as automated approval based on cost management details, and more detailed analytics for administrators.