Hearing-Aid Reformation

“Designing for people with special needs is often called inclusive or universal design. Those names are fitting, for it is often the case that everyone benefits ... Special features made for people with special needs often turn out to be useful for a wide variety of people.”

-- The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman

Hearing-aid, which is a device that hearing-impaired people utilize to promise their hearing functionalities, has been labeled with stigma that only elder groups tend to use such a device. There are multiple factors that cause the occurrence of such a phenomenon, including the common association between hearing loss and old age and the outdated design of hearing aids. The stigma that the hearing-aid is labeled with prevent young generations from getting access to it because they are afraid of being laughed at when they wear hearing-aids. Therefore, to address such a problem, our group determined to design hearing-aid cases that decorate the hearing-aid to be prettier. By designing so, we hope that the hearing-aid cases could bring more confidence to hearing-impaired young people.

This instructable records our comprehensive steps during our progress of producing hearing-aid cases. The total blog include the following four main parts: Determining Topic & Research, Ideation, Prototyping, and Polishing.

If you are interested in designing a hearing-aid case by yourself, feel free to scroll down and check our detailed descriptions :)

The followings are the supplies needed for hearing-aid cases' creation:

• Rhino 7
• Meshmixer
• 3D printer
• Transparent / Flexible / Plastic / Solid PLA materials
• Scissor
• Hot melt adhesive
• Nail polish
• Diamond for decoration (3mm)
• Pearl for decoration
• White string

Before we determining the idea of designing hearing-aid cases, we came up with several other proposals for our Digital Fabrication Final Project. We discussed the idea of producing a lamp with Chinese Shadow Puppetry, an artistic structure realized by "cutting for bending" technique, and cat climbing frames. In the end, we decided to make hearing-aid cases. The reason behind our ultimate decision was that we did not consider the final project as a homework. Instead, we thought that the final project was a chance for us to realize our ideas and bring more happiness to people in society.

With the idea of designing hearing-aid cases, we searched online to create mood-board and get inspirations. Our goal was designing the hearing-aid case to be as pretty as earrings, so what we mainly searched online was earrings with unique shapes, especially the ones that wrap around ears.

Beyond viewing pictures online, we researched Taobao and found out that most of the hearing-aids was designed for elderly group. Such a discovery firmed our decision of designing hearing-aid cases for young generations. To specify our topic, we interviewed hearing-impaired young people in a popular app called RED to listen to their realistic opinions. We sent 20 interview requests, and we received 5 responses. According to their responses, we found out that hearing-aid users' opinions polarize: some of them hope that the hearing-aids can be concealed more perfectly, while the rest of them desire the device to be more conspicuous so that people surrounding them would speak to them more loudly with the awareness of their hearing impairment.

Based on mood-board and interviewees' response, we decided to design conspicuous hearing-aid cases that can be removed easily (just like phone cases). The reason was that covert hearing-aids has been popular online and we wanted to create things that are different.

With the determination of designing conspicuous hearing-aid case, we drew sketches shown above. Initially, we wanted to design five cases, which are in the shapes of hummingbird, whale, bat, giraffe, and elephant. The logic behind our concept was that all of these five animals can communicate in a way that humans cannot hear -- they all could hear ultrasound, which is beyond human normal hearing range. We believe that, just as these five types of animals, impaired people can also communicate with others and with the world in a unique way that normal people cannot. We think such a concept will bring more self-esteem to hearing-impaired group because these animals remind them of their capabilities and worthiness.

Before our first prototype, we bought a classic hearing-aid from Taobao so that we can understand the structure of the device better. Once we bought the hearing-aid, we took pictures of it and imported it into Rhino 7 with "Background Bitmap" tool. Then we measured the device's size to map the hearing aid's size accurately in Rhino. Later on, we drew the device's outline with "free-form" tool and extrude the 2D shape into 3D. By doing so, our design's size would fit users' actual size better.

An alternative way of getting the 3D shape of the hearing-aid is 3D scanning the hearing-aid. In order to scan the shape of the device successfully, it is important to operate paint spraying to cover the reflective parts. Originally, we were trying to 3D scanning the hearing-aid to get its parameters. However, the 3D scanning machine failed to operate due to technical problems. Therefore, if you want to 3D scan the hearing-aid, it would also be a good idea.

With our sketch and preparation for prototype, we started our first prototype, which was hummingbird. Angela built the model in Rhino 7 of her computer and started with creating a sphere. Then she dragged points, lines, and faces of the sphere to form the body of the hummingbird. She drew the tails and wings of hummingbird in "Standard" mode, and she also used "Boolean Difference" tool to carve out the details of hummingbird's wings. One challenge we encountered was that we could successfully print out hummingbird prototype in 3D printer. Under professor's suggestion, we realized that our problem was not setting the parameters correctly -- with detailed pieces like the hummingbird, we should choose "Raft" mode.

After printing out the prototype, Angela revised the design of the hummingbird several times to get the best parameters. For example, she rotated the angle of hummingbird's wings so that the design could fit human's ears more perfectly. She also carved a hole in hummingbird's body to leave a space for diamond, which would display as the bird's eyes.

Designing whale-like hearing-aid case can be broken down into two main phases, which are accomplished in two different applications separately -- Rhino 7 and Meshmixer. In Rhino 7, in order to draw the bent body of the whale, we utilized SubD tools. We broke the whale's body into three parts, rotate them with angels, and connect them with "Bridge" tools. With such a trick, we could easily draw the organic bent shape of the whale. Another important note is remembering to drag both sides of the whale's body at the same time when you adjust the shape. By doing so, we could avoid the result of creating distorted shapes of the model. The whale's tails were designed to be positioned in front of whale's body so that the whale's tail can hook the user's earlobe. The final step in Rhino 7 is utilizing "Boolean Difference", which is cutting the whale model with hearing-aid model.

Then we moved to Meshmixer. In Meshmixer, we drew outlines of whale's belly with "draw++" tool. It is important to draw the outlines apparently so that 3D printers could print them out visually.

With the prototype produced, we adjusted several parameters of the model and reprinted with 3D scanner. Moreover, in order to fit the hearing-aid more perfectly, we utilized flexible plastic rather than solid plastic.

Since the file for whale prototype was greater than instructable's allowance, here is a link to the file: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bdZrXrVp-_8BEQewt6b2Et8vnUAk0BDI/view?usp=sharing

For the bat prototype, we initially wanted to design the bat to sit upon tree branches. Angela was in charge of building the bat prototype. After her constant tryout for several hours, she did not succeed in building a perfect tree branch on the hearing-aid. Therefore, she diverted her attention on Grasshopper in Rhino 7. She downloaded a tree-branch-like model from a Youtube tutorial and eventually succeeded in creating it. For building bats, she drew the shapes of bats in "standard" mode and extrude the shape into 3D designs.

She also encountered challenges of printing out her design. Initially, her tree-like branch was not thick enough, so after she 3D printed her design, she found out that it was very hard to tell the different between the supports and the branch-like designs. Therefore, she thickened her overall design. Another revision she did upon her first prototype was altering the the end of the design to be in front of the earlobe. By doing so, the design looked like a real earring,

For our final prototype, we decided to produce jellyfish rather than giraffe or elephant since we thought that jellyfish shape could be achieved aesthetically better in Rhino 7. Based on previous iterations for building models, the creation of jellyfish was relatively easy. The overall design was composed of three jellyfishes with various sizes. The main challenge we encountered during the production of jellyfish was removing its supports. However, with the support from sharp scissors and our patience, we could remove the supports still successfully.

After using scissors and pilers to remove the prototypes' supports, we started to color our prototypes. To paint the colors, we used nail polish. Nail polishing required our patience -- to show a smooth color, it was necessary to paint the colors layer by layer. We should paint one layer, wait for the polish to dry, and add another layer. We also applied shiny nail polish to the models to display shiny effect.

For hummingbird and whale prototypes, we used diamonds for their eyes. For the bat prototypes, we utilized hot melt adhesive as bats' bodies and applied shiny nail polish to them. For the jellyfish prototype, we used white string to connect pearl decorations. Since the white string's diameter was tiny, making a knot that was big enough to prevent pearls from passing through was very hard. Therefore, we applied hot melt adhesive to the string. Transparent drops from hot melt adhesive can firm the location of pearls.

Here are detailed pictures of our prototypes.

Our reflection could be broken down into following two parts:

Take Aways:

• Rhino 7 Experience: With the repeating process of using "SubD" and "Standard" tools in Rhino 7, we gradually gained more experiences about how to build models in Rhino 7 more effectively. For example, we learned how to carve out detailed textures on bird's textures with "Boolean Difference"; we also learned how to use "Bridge" tools to create the whale model's bent body.
• 3D Machine Operation: Since we utilized different materials for our prototypes, we not only learned about the typical features of certain plastic materials but also learned how to switch materials for the 3D printer.
• Threading Experience: Before this project, I had never tried to thread pearls with strings by myself. However, with the repeating process of threading, I found out that I became gradually more fluent with threading the pearls. I consider this as signifiant improvement!

Improvements For Future:

• Better Time Management: As we were making scheduling for this project, we did not anticipate that our time spent on iteration of prototypes would be as much as we actually went through. Therefore, in future, I think I would spare more time on making prototypes.

Final Note: Thank you professor Andy for your constant support during this project! We have learned much from your course :)

Since the whole workload was divided by two group members, more detailed descriptions about the production progress of humming bird and bat is recorded in this link: https://www.instructables.com/Final-Project-Hearing-Aid-Reformation/