Lila

In literature about hearing loss, related products and current solution, we found a general foundation of what challenges we tackle as designers. To get a better understanding of the social consequences, we however chose to do user research. Four interviews with in total six people who have hearing problems were conducted. The interviews were conducted at the participant’s residents and focused around their own experiences. To guide the process a set of conversational cards were made. On these cards several activities were displayed that could be done in and around the house. A second set of cards showed different experiences, both positively and negatively. Participants were asked to combine these cards as a tool to get the conversation structure. From this, we found that the largest problem was conversations in large groups, as people were often unable to hear what was being said.

The first iteration was a solution to this problem, designed as a lamp above the dinner table. It would move up and down, allowing for the reveal of an array of microphones, which could assist in improving the hearing aid of the user with adding additional inputs directly pointed at people at the table. To compliment the concept of a physical light, an app interface was also designed. The biggest concern of this iteration was the social effect it would have. People pointed out that owning a lamp that would highlight the fact that you cannot hear very well is going to be a problem.

Iteration two turned the social roles at the dinning table around. Instead of the person with hearing loss being the one needing hearing aid, the dinner table lamp would be the one that needed clear audio to shine. And instead of it being an entire lamp, the concept would just be put into a device the size of a light bulb. To test whether this concept would be perceived as desired, we deployed a prototype at an elderly couple with hearing loss. The prototype used a microphone to measure loudness in the room and would adjust the brightness of a connected Philips Hue lightbulb accordingly. The user would still have manual control over the light through an additional box with buttons for turning the light on and off and for disabling the microphone. The concept was seen as being ‘okay’ in real life, but small things should be changed to make the use desirable. An example is the transition the lamp makes between understanding ‘clear’ speech and non-understandable speech.

The final iteration made all the conceptual parts reality and addressed final changes to the prototype that resulted out of the feedback from the deployment. The created prototype was designed to include all required components. A Wemos was programmed to drive the behavior of an LED ring and was connected to the internet to to change settings. A control unit was also developed with its own connected Wemos. In here an orientation sensor measured whether the module was put up-side-down to mute the microphone (over internet). In addition was a magnetometer that would trigger when the separate module would be attached to the lamp via magnets. This would then trigger a change to the LEDs over internet. A program on a laptop would do the microphone processing and ran a rhythm-finding process. If a rhythm is speech would be found, it would classify the speech as being clear. This would then over internet be send to the Wemos in the light bulb and change its settings. Finally, an app interface was designed and a matching game to gamify the learning process of improving ones clarity of speech. During demoday everything was presented and attached to the network of other projects, allowing a miniature version of the light to mirror the behavior of the actual prototype.