What is
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The ChallengeBoth Jenna and Drew have been involved in the music industry for a long time and came to us expressing the dire need for hearing protection and awareness for music industry professionals. This vision propelled their desire to create an app where users could access affordable treatment and engaging resources to make hearing wellness a priority. Unanimously, we worked towards actualizing the development of an honest, human centered product.
I worked with fellow DESIGNATION cohort mates Andy Cho and Glo Kim to develop designs that holistically addressed the need for accessible hearing wellness resources and audiological care for music industry professionals and enthusiasts. |
Our key takeaways:
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Our client's questions:
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During our user and SME interviews, everyone agreed that:
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Brian Fligor, the CDO of Lantos Technologies, told us that
the audiology industry does a terrible job of marketing hearing wellness. There is a stigma that separates audiologists from musicians, which has brought about a stagnancy in hearing wellness prevention and awareness due the lack of audiologists trained in music induced hearing loss and injury. Sam, an audio engineer outside of PdB’s network, told us that many musicians are unaware and hearing wellness is not talked about or pushed for. He told us that DJs play the loudest sound but rarely wear earplugs. |
Brian, a sound engineer, told us that he wears ear protection religiously because his job depends on it. He adjusts the frequencies and mixes of musicians for their performances because he wants to reduce injury in their ears.
Johnny, a professional guitarist in a grunge-rock band, shared similar thoughts: “I think there are too many people that don’t care enough about it.” He saw the value of hearing protection because older musicians he respected told him to take care of it since hearing loss would severely affect his ability to play and enjoy music. |
We wrote out insights we pulled from existing wireframes, user research, and our problem statement to evaluate the impact of and need for specific features by creating a values plot. We wanted to explore the types of things that would engage our users and allow them to see the value in hearing wellness. If people weren’t able to see the value in hearing wellness to act upon it and make it a habit, then we needed to start from there. |
The educative onboarding focuses on increasing awareness and engaging users by helping them realize the value of protecting their hearing through facts about the repercussions of sound.
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The upfront onboarding provides users with an upfront look of features available within the product.
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The profile onboarding allows users to set up a personalized account and share their unique backgrounds for the product to cater to their needs.
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Concepting the
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I took the lead for the profile onboarding concept. Based on the insights we gained,
users said that trust is highly sought inthe music industry because the materialism and stigma attached to fame and networking makes it fragile and hard to maintain. I felt that providing a welcoming and conversational platform to tell their stories would engage users on a personal level, build their trust, and lead them into the product. I wanted to provide users an easy process that would assess their current state of hearing wellness, what they know, and their current attitude towards it. Several users also talked about making things fun and engaging, sort of like a game with lots of visuals. While I didn’t think that gamifying the onboarding process would be universally preferred since the notion of competition can cause stress, I wanted to incorporate fun iconography and friendly language to address both medical and personal information. |
Concepting the
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Coming from an education background, I immediately wanted to work on the educational resource concept. My love and appreciation for design has been profoundly impacted by my fascination with human thought patterns and desire to help them achieve their goals through genuine human connections. I wanted this resource to promote diverse learning styles and optimize the way human minds work by respecting individual thought processes. Through this concept, I explored ways to deliver hearing wellness information to users in a way that would be familiar yet refreshing to them.
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Educative Onboarding
+ Bite-sized information educated users on the importance of hearing wellness - Lack of app information |
Upfront Onboarding
+ Users knew what they were getting themselves into before signing up - Stocky and impersonal; lack of fun and excitement. |
Profile Setup
+ Questions and answer options were tailored to their specific needs and situations - Lengthy process |
Messaging An Audiologist
+ Transparency and personalized connection with an audiologist - Users wanted the language to be more welcoming with a level of professionalism. |
Hearing Test
+ “Terms & Conditions” and “HIPAA Compliancy” screens increased their trust and made them take the test more seriously. |
Educational Resources
+ A variety of information and curated content. -The resources were helpful and engaging, but not for regular reference. |
We placed our hearing test in a sub tab of "My Hearing" called "My Ears" so that users could access personalized hearing wellness services.
In conjunction, we created a sub tab called "My Audiologist" that users can use to message an audiologist, view nearby clinicians, and access actionable post-message options such as taking a hearing test or viewing custom ear products. We wanted the process to encourage proactivity from the user so that they could keep track of their hearing tests and 3D scans and continue to make it a habit sustained by trust and transparency they received from the app. |
RecommendationsThough our time with Project Decibel has ended, there is still a lot of un-chartered territory to explore for further product development. Here are the key recommendations that we made to develop upon the current state of the product.
Iterating and Testing Challenge: With given limited time and resources, we were not able to go about performing enough rounds of iteration and testing. Recommendations:
Content Strategy Challenge: We had difficulty determining how to display the content to different users with different mental models with varying ages and backgrounds. Recommendations:
Distinct Value for Users Challenge: There wasn’t a clear understanding of the business value proposition from users. Recommendations:
Client Reception Jenna and Drew communicated with us throughout the project and provided us with keen resources and support. They have continued to work with DESIGNATION to develop the UI for the product based on our research and wireframes. |
ReflectionThis project provided valuable insights into how music industry professionals deal with hearing wellness and how culture and environment impacts their perspectives. The idea of musicians being “creatures of habit” became an integral part of helping musicians improve their hearing health by making care and awareness a regular part of their lives. Music professionals work so hard to perfect their craft to the point where they feel that their accomplishments should forego their health, which in turn creates roadblocks for their well-being and the qualities of their careers.
There was a bit of a disconnect between what we intended to figure out from testing and what we actually gained. In our test plan, we included quantifiable metrics that asked users to assess information value, awareness, ownership, and trust users felt from the product on a scale of 1-5. However, we ended up asking more qualitative questions because we realized that their personal experiences overwhelmingly impacted their interactions with the product. Users gave very personable and specific feedback, which helped us a lot with our synthesis process. That in turn allowed us to move forward with recommendations to improve the quality of user interactions and product value. After going through this journey, I can confidently say that we were able to create viable options for users to take care of their hearing wellness. I hope that many musicians and music enthusiasts will use the Project Decibel app to improve their hearing wellness and prioritize their state of being in order to fully engage in their passions for music. |