SHENNONA HEAR
Mobile
IoT Device
Cross-device
A hearing aid that simplifies device-to-app relations through physical mapping. Besides touch controls on the device, the app displays an exact image of the hearing aids in a line-art graphic so that seniors with tactile difficulty can easily understand and adjust settings right on their phones.
Team
1 Product Manager, 1~2 Industrial Designers, 1 User Researcher, 3 UI/UX Designers, 1 Sound Engineer, 2 Mobile App Engineers
Development Time
13 - 24 months, launched in 2021
My Role
Information Architecture, UI/UX Design, Prototyping, Visual Design, Illustration
Target Regions
Asia, North America
Target Groups
Consumer
Platforms
Hearing aid, Mobile
Situation
As the world's largest notebook computer manufacturer, Compal Electronics focused on expanding the field of the smart medical and wearable market in recent years, the one of tries was the series of true wireless (TWS) products, like true wireless earbuds, smartwatches, and more. Followed the corporation’s policy, the Innovation Lab department was assigned to build a wearable smart medical product.
Market Overview
The market’s filled with personal sound amplifier products (PSAP). However, statistics show that 60% of these wearers not only find the App hard to use, they still have trouble following conversations because all sounds including noise are enhanced.
Goals
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TWS earbuds also can be applied to the needs of health care.
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Find solutions for hearing impairment by our own algorithm.
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Product with ISO 14971 certified— Application of risk management to medical devices.
Understand & Ideate
Target Audiences
Around 466 million people worldwide have disabling hearing loss (2018), and 1.1 billion young people (aged between 12–35 years) are at risk of hearing loss due to exposure to noise in recreational settings. In addition, there are 75% of hearing loss people (350M) without hearing aid devices due to “Not easy to use”, “Affordability” and “Social Stigma”.
PSAP Wearers’ Pain Points
The studies show that 60% of personal sound amplifier products (PSAP) users face the problems below,
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Communication frustration
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The mix of voice and surrounding sounds
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Complex App features
Competitive Analysis
After getting to know the market and the user’s pain points, I studied the APP design of six global major brands like GN ReSound, Widex, Oticon, Phonak, Starkey, and Signia, finding out their standard basic functions and using patterns. Most of the hearing aid brands are coming from Nordic, Europe, and America.
App’s Functions and Framework
The table stakes
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Earbuds pairing
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Left and right ears volume adjusting
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Single ear using supported
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Hearing mode switching based on scenarios
The value propositions
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Voice enhancement and surrounding sound filtering
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Voice Tag: specific person’s voice identified and amplified
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Speech-to-text: as visual accessibility supported
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Narrative-based hearing test
The product manager set the table stakes, furthermore, the design team came up with the value proposition through brainstorming. I defined the APP structure, further function details, interactions, and user flows with my teammates.
Scenario-Based
Most people travel between a lot of scenarios every day, and the hearing modes they need each time won’t be the same, either. According to this, we made a flexible and scenario-based design—— Here are five different hearing modes set up originally, to meet users’ needs switching in real-time.
Voice Tag
By the algorithm, voices could be recognized and enhanced. Under a group meeting, the user can preset specific speakers to zero in on by using the VoiceTag function so only their voices will be amplified against a diminished background. Moreover, users can set up their family, friends, or colleagues as contacts and record their voiceprints to choose whom to tag and focus on.
Speech-to-Text
Most sound-to-text products only transcribe word-for-word, but plain texts often do not express emotions accurately. With speech visualization design, SHENNONA HEAR uses typography to show real emotion to improve the communication experience.
Interaction & Visual Design
I tried three solutions with different navigations and visual styles.
Plan A: Navigation with Muscle Memory
For our target audience, the group of age from the middle to old, here are simple navigation and intuitive hand controls with little or no static settings menu. Users can switch left and right to change the modes, and scroll up and down to control the volume.
I took the idea from Asia's traditional ink painting art for the APP's visual design. The illustrations look like ink dropping on the page, based on each hearing mode, it would be shown in specific colors and shapes to help users to recognize and distinguish well.
Narrative-based Hearing Test
Instead of the usual monotonous pitch test, SHENNONA HEAR uses a softer, more friendly approach starting with a narrative-based hearing test, which takes users through an enchanted forest of sounds. Test results gathered will be analyzed to form a set of recommended enhancement settings unique to the user.
Plan B: Cards and Gallery
In addition to vivid interaction and art-liked graphic of plan A, I crafted plan B with cards’ interaction—— the general using way for users to adjust their hearing modes through switching cards. Through illustrations and color planning, I tried to break the usual impression of medical tools and brought more emotions and warm feelings to users.
Plan C: Flat
One of the shortages of card navigation is that setting items are placed in the second layer, and users have to switch in and out with multiple taps. For better accessibility, all the main functions are shown flatly in plan C, making users know what they can do at quick sight, and focus on their major tasks through card-expanded or hid.
Prototyping and User interviews
I made the high-fidelity App prototype of plan C via ProtoPie. The researcher and I cooperated with a hearing consulting agency, recruiting the hearing impaired respondents to our user testing. Through operations on the APP prototype, most of the subjects reflected that they might use it for assistance while wearing the hearing aids.
Even though we could roll out a bunch of detailed settings, the true need of users might be a simple and clear solution, according to this takeaway, the design team planned for optimized directions.
Results
This product launched in 2021 and got iF Design Award of UI. Although I left the team due to my career plan, as a member of the initial team, I participated in the first half of development, building the foundation of SHENNONA HEAR App’s structures, flows, and navigations.
After the user tests and feedback collection, the App design was transferred aiming for easy and simple use, UI mapping provides guidance throughout to give the user more confidence in operating both the app and hearing aids.
