Listening in: An Exploration of Forms for Hearing Aid Design

Abstract

Motivated to inspire more proactive hearing aid adoption and retention, this thesis explores how to generate new forms for OTC hearing aids. In the process of doing so, the opportunity gap between the success of consumer audio hearables and the lack of proactivity for hearing aid adoption is investigated. Information collected from interviews, surveys and codesign sessions was synthesized into three design considerations: expressivity, versatility, and extensibility. Feedback and critique about existing hearable forms inspired the formulation of a user-centric design method for hearing aid form design and two example implementations of this method are presented.