Hearing aids today are ugly things that people with hearing impairment have to stick inside their earhole. However, if a new company called Soundhawk is to be believed, better hearing can be cool. Soundhawk has come up with a new Smart Listening System that aims to change the way we experience various hearing devices and open them up to a whole new consumer base by merging hearing technology with some handy industrial design and UX.
The problem is that hearing aids are a medical product. People who have serious hearing troubles go to a doctor who then prescribes a specialised hearing aid to be made for lots of money. The whole experience is not very pleasant, and the device is awfully unattractive. It is like having braces, and then being stuck with them for life. There is nothing wrong with the medical approach, except that it cuts out a large chunk of the population who can benefit from hearing correction. There are people in their 30’s and 40’s who cannot hear very well, but will not settle for hearing aids for the fear of looking like old fogies. Soundhawk is a decent crack at a solution for their problems as well.
The device has a few different parts – the earpiece (or scoop), a charging case, a wireless microphone, and the Soundhawk app. The hardware is made from soft touch plastics in Bose colours. It looks more like a consumer product than one that you were handed in a hospital. The earpiece comes with microphone inside it, and although it has tiny little dimples on the side that look like they were created for sucking in sound, the listening ports are actually on the top. This makes the earpiece reversible from left to right. At six grams, you won’t feel its weight
In order to design a comfortable earpiece, the company studied a number of earbuds and Bluetooth headsets to see what works, and then decided to go for this compact design that was intentionally not meant to be invisible. It sits quite comfortably in your ear and does not protrude from the boundaries created by the cartilage of your ear. They have thought the ergonomics through meticulously to enable people to actually use the system. To push the device back into your ear, you will just have to press the volume button on the headset.
The tiny miraculous device works in tandem with an accompanying app that has a number of settings for various “sound scenes” like tight indoor spaces and outdoors. Once you pick where you are, you will have to dial in the best tuning that suits your ear with the help of an intuitive touch and drag interface.
If you are in a very loud place, the small mic helps you to place or clip an ear wherever the sound you want to hear is coming from and it beams it straight back to your ear. If you are in a crowded restaurant, you can place the mic across the table and hear what is going on.
It comes with an eight-hour battery, and the extra juice in the charging case gives you about 24 hours of life. This way, you won’t have to charge it all the time.
The pre- orders have already opened, and the device is priced at $299. It will, however, shoot up to $300 once it hits retail stores. http://www.soundhawk.com
http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-metroplus/smart-listening-device/article6656358.ece
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