Smartphone product design for users who are deaf or hard of hearing

Design a phone for people who are deaf. Describe which users you would design for, the problems you would solve first, what the phone would do differently from a standard one, and how you would know it is succeeding. ```hint Follow the sound A phone uses sound for much more than the other side of a call. Walk through a day and note each moment when a sound tells a hearing person something, on the phone or around them, then ask what a screen, vibration, light or camera could do in its place. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Should we design for people who are profoundly deaf, for those who are hard of hearing, or both? Do the target users mainly communicate in a sign language, in writing, or by speaking and lip-reading? - Are we building a new device, or adding features and hardware changes to existing smartphones? - Which countries are in scope, given that sign languages, relay services and emergency texting differ between them? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A clear choice of users within the deaf and hard-of-hearing population, including how sign language users differ from people who lost their hearing later in life. - Pain points across calls, alerts, media and sounds in the surroundings, prioritized by frequency and severity, with safety treated seriously. - Concrete features that use vision, touch and the camera in place of sound, with a reasoned first version and a view on hardware versus software. - Success metrics with guardrails on accuracy, privacy and battery life. - Risks such as transcription errors and designing without input from deaf users. ### Follow-up Questions - Live captions misread names and medical terms during a call with a doctor. How would you reduce the harm from those errors? - If you could change only one piece of hardware in a standard phone for these users, which would it be and why? - How would you recruit and test with deaf users before launch, and what would you most need to learn from them?