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Sound Sustainability
Company Overview
Sound Sustainability was a Seattle-based startup founded by an Army veteran who has experienced hearing loss. Their mission was to develop and improve access to affordable hearing aids for adults with mild to moderate hearing loss in addition to raising awareness and increasing education about hearing health.
In March 2021, Sound Sustainability won the Holloman Health Innovation Challenge WRF Capital Grand Prize for its approach to improving access for hearing impaired or challenged individuals through the creation of high-quality, yet affordable hearing aids.
User Research Process
1. Develop survey and interview questionnaires
To prepare for user interviews, the team created a preliminary survey for participants to complete. With this survey we were able to filter participants who fit our criteria. From there, we created a more in depth questionnaire to conduct interviews via Zoom. These questions aimed to understand our users goals, wants, needs, and pain points.
2. Initial discovery - Conduct user interviews
In 7 weeks our team interviewed 20+ hearing aid users who identified as having mild to moderate hearing loss. We would usually conduct the interview in pairs, one interviewer and one notetaker. After, we used the Innovation Within platform to upload our research findings where we could categorize our data.
3. Synthesize the Data
Once the interviews were completed and all data was documented, the team created a Mural board to synthesize and analyze the information we had collected.
Findings
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It takes years for users to address their hearing loss for multiple reasons
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Users take action after a serious or uncomfortable experience
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Users did not feel they were properly educated about their hearing aids
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Users felt their hearing aid options were limited based on their audiologist recommendations or their insurance policy
These insights helped shaped the design team's problem statements and design goals as they began building the website. We focused on 4 specific areas of the hearing aid purchasing experience:
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taking the hearing test
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deciding to address hearing loss
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purchasing hearing aids
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using hearing aids
Design Work
In addition to overseeing the implementation of our design goals, I was in charge of design system work and evaluating design work for accessibility issues following WCAG 2.1 AA guidelines. One of the biggest accomplishments was establishing a branding guide that worked cohesively with the logo. We initially ran into a lot of contrast concerns with the logo color especially against a white background but we were able to build a more extensive color palette that was more accessible.
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