HearHopper is a mobile application that helps parents who care about their children’s hearing abilities.
This application promotes the importance of hearing maintenance in children's learning and social lives by providing a interactional pure-tone hearing test, a gamified noise in sounds quiz, and a noise check of the child's surroundings.
Role
Product Designer / Project Manager
Timeline
4 months (Jan 2024 - Apr 2024)
Project Type
School Project (Team Project)
Design Thinking
UX Research
Branding
Prototype
User Testing
Problem
Through an interview with an audiologist, we identified a significant disparity in awareness of the importance of hearing abilities between hearing specialists and parents.
Hearing loss can develop at any time in childhood and causes not only speech, behaviour, and learning problems, but also social and emotional growth difficulties.
However, there are limited resources to recognize the symptoms and maintain their auditory health with regular check-ups in Canada.
Solution
Our solution is to give parents the opportunity to pay attention to their children's hearing and the noise around them by using a mobile application.
Impact
HearHopper won the Market-Ready Marvel Award at the 2024 Langara College Capstone Showcase, where 6 teams participated, for its demand in the medical technology field.
Takeaway
Precise hand off
I explored the ideal way to precisely hand off prototypes with plenty of interaction, including sounds and animations, to developers.
Balance between engaging and straightforward
I found that if the interaction is too entertaining, users might miss the goal of a task during their journey.
Inclusive design
I made sure navigation is clear without texts, using animation and illustrations, keeping in our mind that users’ language maturity is vary.
First of all, I conducted secondary research with medical papers and articles to understand the background of auditory health in Canada.
Background research
Findings
Insufficient check-up opportunity: No regular hearing check-up for children is mandatory in Vancouver, Canada.
Hearing threshold shift: 12.5 % of children aged 6 to 19 are estimated to have hearing threshold shifts due to noisy environments.
Speech-in-Noise issue: Some children have difficulties to identify spoken words when background noise is present.
Conclusions
Hearing in childhood plays a crucial role in physical as well as social development.
Parents do not have a lot of accessible resources to maintain their children’s auditory health in Vancouver.
We analyzed competitors to identify market gaps, allowing us to tailor our product to meet unmet needs and offer something unique.
Competitor analysis
Direct competitor
Sound Scouts
Indirect competitor
Mimi
hearWHO
Findings
Competitors more focus on testing and tracking the results
Some competitors are less engaging for children due to requiring literacy
Conclusions
Providing comprehensive support for children’s hearing would stand out in the market
Making the test engaging is crucial
Sound Scouts
Mimi
hearWHO
We had expert interviews with an audiologist in Vancouver to validate our secondary research and created personas and user stories from these insights.
Personas
We understood that our target users is the parents who have children aged from 6 to 12
We created personas to identify their needs
User Stories
As a busy mother of a 7-year-old boy, I want an easy and quick way to regularly check my child's hearing ability at home, so I can ensure his hearing is developing properly without taking much time.
As a mother of a boy who often plays games on his tablet, I want an app that can notice him when environmental noise levels are too high, so he can be aware and protect his hearing.
As a father of young children, I want to provide fun and educational hearing-related activities through an app, so my kids can check their hearing abilities while enjoying themselves.
We ideated How Might We Questions to frame challenges as opportunities.
How might we comprehensively help parents check their children’s hearing ability?
We ensured the users are able to navigate smoothly through the app and complete key tasks by creating userflow.
User Flow
We placed four navigation icons to make users easily access to main features.
We developed a brand identity to convey our value, designed a user interface that reflects this identity.
Branding
Concepts
Creativity
Security
Cheerfulness
Theme
We chose color block theme to engage children’s attention
We used black for CTA to avoid blending with other colors
We created wireframes for evaluating and enhancing the user experience.
Wireframing
Mid-fidelity wireframes
After defining screens, we proceeded creating wireframes focusing on main three flows.
Three flows
Pure-tone hearing test
In-noise quiz
Noise check
I conducted usability test to check if users can complete the main task without difficulties.
Usability test
Overview
Four parents who have children aged from 6 to 12 participated in the usability test
Participants were asked to test the pure-tone hearing test flow
The initial design asked users to hold a button and trace a shape while hearing the test sound
Findings
The static tutorial did not help users to understand what they had to do
Long instructions would not be read by children
Holding and tracing at the same time was a complex task even for parents
Conclusions
Tutorial screen should have animations
Instruction should be shortened
Test mechanic must be simplified, just holding a button, so children can focus on the main task which is hearing test sounds
The button could be animated to engage children’s attention
Based on feedback from usability assessments, we crafted a prototype with colors and sounds.
Prototype
I mainly used Figma for general interactions and ProtoPie for detailed manipulation of sounds aiming for precise hand-off to developers.
We decided to implement the three main features into the HearHopper app, taking feasibility into consideration through the discussion with developers so we can solve the users' problems we defined in the early design phase.
Pure-tone hearing test
What is it?
Pure-tone audiometry is used to determine the softest tones a child can hear at various frequencies.
How does it help?
This feature helps parents detect the changes in their children’s hearing conditions and start treatments in the early stage because most hearing loss in young children is temporary or medically treatable.
In-Noise Quiz
What is it?
The In-Noise Quiz reflects children’s functional hearing in environments that contain multiple sounds.
How does it help?
This feature helps parents identify difficulties of speech perception in noise that is not detected with pure-tone test for children. In addition, because the quiz consists of animal sounds, it can be taken by all children, regardless of their language maturity level.
Noise Check
What is it?
Three different levels of noise are identified with this feature to make parents aware of their children’s environmental noise.
How does it help?
It offers an opportunity for parents to take proactive measures and create quieter environments. Avoiding noise is the only way to mitigate the risk of noise-induced hearing loss.
Check the whole prototype out here!
What's next?
Usability Testing with Children: Ensure the testing process is intuitive for children, enabling them to navigate and complete tasks without requiring parental guidance.
User Interviews with Children: Gain insights into children's awareness of hearing health and identify key factors needed to promote this awareness effectively.
Animation for the Sound-in-Noise Quiz: Develop engaging animations to motivate children to interact with the app independently, minimizing the need for parental intervention.
Documents
Documents related to this project can be downloaded here.