LavaLab is the University of Southern California's premiere, student-run, product incubator. Members are distributed in groups of product designers, developers, and product managers, to create a product throughout an entire semester. At the end, these are pitched in front of investors and stakeholders, providing realistic insight on the tech industry.
Co-Founder / Product Designer
Bryce Klinker - Developer
Nicholas W. - Developer
Gloria Chang - Product Manager
So many streaming platforms lack a variety of subtitle options, isolating many non-English speaking viewers and language learners. It takes away the whole point of offering a diverse selection in movies when after all, users cannot understand foreign films.
As the majority of our team are from immigrant families who have family members that don’t speak English as their first language, we all faced the same issues when coming to watching foreign films, and here is mine:
Just a few weekends ago, I sat down with my family to watch a movie. We scrolled through Netflix and finally settled on The Dark Knight, an award-winning film that reached millions of people internationally. Yet, when I went to select subtitles for my parents to read and actually understand the film, this is what I saw: the only subtitle selection option was English.
This is a problem, not just with The Dark Knight, not just with Netflix. So many streaming platforms lack a variety of subtitle options, isolating many non-English speaking viewers and language learners.
Our goal as Canoe is to bring accessible captioning to viewers of all language backgrounds for all platforms. Our solution is simple; it’s a browser extension that allows users to select a language or two, customize elements like size and color, and load onto the screen subtitles for their language selection.
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• Streaming platforms provide an inclusive community for all users
• Additional subtitles could be a new way of language learning
International cinema in the US is bigger than ever. According to Netflix, US viewers consumed 50% more foreign-language content in 2020. Additionally, there exists 25 million people in America who lack a firm grasp of English –– from immigrant and bilingual families.
Altogether the streaming industry is $59 billion and it’s expected to grow 20% in the next 7 years.
We do have competitors, other browser extensions that provide subtitles for ease of access or language learning. None have managed to be user friendly, affordable, accurate, and accessible across all platforms. Which is what we as Canoe strive for.
Business model has 2 parts. First, we begin by providing a free for all version that allows access to all languages available but also secondly, we include a premium version that allows additional features like font size customization, color options, and multiple languages selected at once.