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My Evaluation of Hulu

I evaluated Hulu as one part of my group’s final project, which is to examine multiple streaming services for usability concerns. Before this evaluation, all I really knew about Hulu was that it 1) wasn’t Netflix and 2) has ads. I only have access to Hulu because it came as a package with Spotify for students. That being said, I usually don’t browse through Hulu unless I’ve exhausted all of my other options trying to find a specific title. Since I didn’t know very much about it, I was pleasantly surprised by my findings. Here, I will share some of my observations about Hulu's content organization, playability, and accessibility.

To start, Hulu’s content organization does some things well and some things not so well. Among the things that the service does well is allowing viewers to distinguish between movies and TV shows very quickly. To further this, once one of those options has been selected, viewers can narrow their search down by limiting the results to specific genres. Hulu makes these options very easy to find because they are at the top of the screen. After this, though, the organization gets a little bit messy. There are inconsistencies in the size of the content icons. The options that Hulu chooses to enlarge also seem to be whatever Hulu wants to promote, not what Hulu thinks I as the viewer would be interested in seeing. If Hulu tailored its promoted content to match what the user likes, it might make the promotions more effective. Hulu also sorts movies/shows into categories such as “For You”, “Classics”, etc. which is helpful, but the order that these categories are shown does not seem to have a purpose.

Hulu’s playability is another place for concern. The service lets viewers automatically begin playback on their main featured title and titles under the “Keep Watching” category. What doesn’t make sense to me, though, is how on the titles not in these categories or those being promoted, Hulu puts a white play button in the middle of the title’s icon when the viewer’s mouse scrolls over it. To me, pressing a play button should begin the playback of the movie. This button, however, brings up another page with the movie’s details and another play button that actually lets viewers begin playback. The icons also have three dots in the upper right-hand corner that take viewers to the detail page. I feel like it is unnecessary to have two buttons serve the same purpose, especially when one of them is widely recognized as having a certain function.

Hulu does well when it comes to accessibility. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I could customize the subtitle’s font, size, color, highlight, shadow, etc. I’ve never come across the option to do this before. In addition, Hulu offers voice commands, keyboard shortcuts, closed captions, subtitles, screen readers, and audio descriptions. Hulu also offers guidance on how to set these options up. Another area where Hulu excels is in affordability. Its base cost is less than many streaming services; it starts at $5.99/month. However, there are expensive add-ons for channels like HBO Max and Live TV.

Overall, Hulu isn’t bad. It does have some flaws, but none make the service completely inoperable. There are other aspects to Hulu that I didn't explore, such as the range of titles and genres Hulu offers. I think it could be interesting to compare the types of titles Hulu offers with the titles Netflix and other popular streaming services offer. I also did not spend much time analyzing the actual playback of Hulu's content. Both of these could be areas to explore further.

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