Enhancing the 'Longest-Lasting Wearable Device'

Unitron is focused on improving the design of hearing aids to make them comfortable, aesthetically pleasing, and easy to use.

Unitron, a hearing instrument company based in Kitchener, Ontario, is focused on turning the hearing aid--that ubiquitous harbinger of aging--into a comfortable companion worn without embarrassment. The company's developers are using design thinking and a patient-centric design philosophy to achieve this goal.

It's unique to hear about the latest design principles applied to what some may view as the old technology of hearing instruments.  While hearing aids may not have the coveted cachet of the latest digital devices, Ara Talaslian, vice president of research and development at Unitron, pointed out that hearing aids "are the first and longest-lasting wearable device by leaps and bounds!" He added, "The most advanced wearable device technology in the world by far is in our hands here."

What Unitron is doing to that technology was spurred about seven years ago by a realization that a hearing aid's success is first determined by whether the patient accepts the instrument or not. "Nobody is kicking and screaming to go get a hearing instrument," Talaslian said.  

With that in mind, it became imperative to ensure that the patient first becomes comfortable with the hearing instrument. That concept of comfort has three components, Talaslian explain--psychological comfort, wearing comfort, and acoustic comfort. Psychological comfort comes first, when the patient holds the hearing aid in his or her hands and decides if they like how it looks. Acceptance at that level leads to a patient putting on the hearing instrument and determining whether it is comfortable to wear. If the instrument feels comfortable on, the patient starts to examine the acoustic comfort, or whether there are any strange sounds from the device, he said.

Of course, after a user is comfortable with the hearing instrument, the sound quality becomes important. If the instrument works in normal setting, a patient might then begin to test its performance by using it in complex settings like in a restaurant or at a party. "This ascension from comfort to sound quality to performance of the instrument is, in essence, instinctively what the person goes through as they are seeing if they will accept the hearing instrument," Talaslian pointed out.

But the entire cascade of accepting a hearing instrument starts with a person's perception of its psychological and wearing comfort. That is significantly impacted by the instrument's design. This realization is how Unitron developed its design principles, Talaslian said.  "That baseline thinking has led to a lot of conclusions that we have fully implemented on multiple hearing instrument lines out of Unitron."

Corey Banham, design manager at Unitron, explained that the company's patient-centric design philosophy has three pillars: aesthetics, comfort, and intuitive functionality. Aesthetics, of course, covers the way the devices look and a patient's first impression toward them. Comfort is a function of looking and feeling comfortable. Intuitive functionality means the instruments must be easy to use, even for patients who may have dexterity challenges or may not be interested in technology. That means the device's controls must be easy to find, distinguish, and use. 

How, exactly, do these concepts translate into a physical product? Banham pointed out that Unitron's hearing instruments have smooth lines and organic shapes. "It needs to look like something that is part of the body rather than something with hard edges that could end up putting pressure points on the skin behind the ear," he said. That means the device's controls are also design to fall into the overall instrument's smooth lines.

This preference for smooth, rounded shapes is a design tenet. Talaslian noted, "Psychologically, people do not like tension in the industrial design. Meaning, they don't like something odd sticking out or something unusual which is out of place." This approach makes for instruments that are comfortable to wear too, he said.

Arriving at a smartly designed device takes a lot of testing. Banhan explained that Unitron works with an industrial design house and incorporates patients in field trials with the company's audiology team. From numerous sketches of instruments that match its design launguage, Unitron narrows the ideas to a few different options that are then rapid prototyped. Those prototypes are tested on field trial patients to determine whether the designs allow for easy control and tactility, Banham said.

This can be a lengthy process, taking 18-24 months, with almost 40% of that time devoted to validating the design with patients, Talaslian said. "We continually  have patient preference data coming in to us and making incremental optimizations to our product so that it ends up in a state that fully satisfies that pyramid . . . satisfying comfort, sound quality, and performance," he said.

Moxi Kiss, Unitron's first instrument to incorporate this patient-centric design language, was in development for about two years. That focus and investment paid off in the form of an iF Product Design award and Red Dot Product Design award, both in 2014. The following year, the Moxi Fit won the Red Dot Product Design award.

Banham referenced the company's "Moxi-Unscripted" video as evidence of positive first impressions toward its hearing instruments. In the video, users are filmed reacting to Unitron's Moxi hearing instruments after opening their eyes and looking at the devices closely in their hands. There are exclamations on its small size, rounded shape, and colors. Then, a few of the patients express surprise at how comfortable and hard to notice it feels when worn.

"They have this preconceived notion that hearing instruments are big beige bananas," Banhan said. "They're really quite pleasantly surprised, and [the instruments are] designed to make a good impression like that. It really is changing that stigma."

[Image courtesy of UNITRON]