About our Client, Concha Labs
Concha Labs is a hearing solutions company that is working to modernize the personalization of your hearing profile at home. Their innovative approach will change the standards of hearing and give users a product that is more affordable and accessible, with better sound quality personalized to the
user’s individual needs and preferences.
Users can try out Concha Labs’ patented Soundscope technology online and hear how Concha’s technology adjusts the way they hear real-life environments and their
surroundings, including speech and other situations.
Timeline
3 weeks | 4 UX Designers
My Key Roles
UX Researcher, UX & UI designer
Tools Used
Figma, Photoshop, Miro, Zeplin
Motives Behind The Project
Project Scope:
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We noticed that the process of procuring hearing solutions has not improved much since the 1900’s. It still involves in person testing, and multiple appointments with hearing specialists and audiologists. The hearing equipment usually isn’t covered by insurance, and if it is, you have to complete mountains of paperwork to get it, while still paying exorbitant prices out of pocket. My team and I were tasked with integrating Concha Labs new AI fitting feature, Ear Landmark Detection, into their existing beta portal for both desktop, and mobile versions.
Our Challenge :
Research Goals :
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How do we represent the Ear Landmark Detection on the website desktop and mobile, for the user to be able to checkout with the correct size hearing pods?
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How do we make the design cross functional across desktop and mobile, while remaining visually appealing and representative of the current Concha Labs branding?
Once we had an idea into what our Client wanted us to focus on.. we were able to start our research, with some goals in mind.
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To learn about pain points, needs, and goals for those who are hard of hearing.
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To learn more about how our target audience feels about procuring hearing aids.
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To learn more about where Concha Labs stand within the market.
Our UX Process
Market Research, Business Research, Competitive Research
Deliver
Define
Design
Discover
Final Hi-Fidelity Designs, Iterations, Next Steps, Development Handoff
User Interviews, Heuristics, Journey Mapping, Usability Testing
Design Studio, Feature Prioritization, MoSCoW Mapping, User Testing
Uncovering The Issue...
Initial Thinking/Hypothesis:
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We assumed that people may not be aware of the hearing technology that is out there, and there’s even a slight social stigma around it.
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People may feel intimidated, or ashamed by the overall process to procure a hearing aid. So to clarify and draw in on the leading challenges people are experiencing we asked ourselves …
How might we help streamline and humanize the process of getting fit for, and purchasing hearing aids online?
To begin to answer that question, I dove into some research on Concha Labs & their competitors.
Competitive Analysis :
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We conducted a competitive matrix, and a competitive and comparative feature analysis. We were able to learn Concha Labs' unique value:
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Not many competitors or comparators are able to be as virtual as Concha Labs and still rely on in-person testing and fitting.
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Concha Labs is really unique in that they will provide an online shopping experience for their AI fitting process and purchasing of hearing pods that compete with the hearing aid market.
Once we understood where Concha Labs fit into the hearing solutions market, we wanted to learn more about the people we were designing for.
User Interviews :
We interviewed 9 users who are hard of hearing, or care for someone who is hard of hearing. Questions were framed around learning the goals, needs, and pain points of those in our target audience.After completed our interviews, we used affinity mapping to synthesize our notes, and create “I statements” and insights. This helped us to find common trends within the data.
What Did We Learn?
We were able to derive these key findings from the interview process:
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It is imperative that hearing aids work and fit properly.
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Users find websites over marketed, creating uneasiness & distrust.
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Users need to speak with an informed individual.
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Shopping for hearing aids cater mostly to older people.
Building Empathy
Using our key insights, we were able to create two archetypes of users that we would be designing for. Our primary persona, Chris represents people that are hard of hearing. Our secondary persona, Vicki, represents someone who cares for a hard of hearing person.
We got a deeper glance into low points for Chris & Vicki that included worry around price transparency, associations with older age, as well as things like lack of empathy from specialists, worrying about proper fit, and whether they will work as well as he needs them to, etc.
Validating Our Problem
After doing research and learning more about the goals needs and frustrations of those in our target audience, we were able to validate our problem space:
The experience of shopping online for hearing aids is still far from ideal as websites often lack transparency and the human element, while they also feel over-marketed and generally geared towards an older demographic.
How might we help humanize the process of getting fit for and buying hearing aids online, and help users like Chris feel confident to complete their purchase?
Inspecting for Usability
Before beginning our user testing, we used the 10 heuristic principles to assess the 6 existing pages. We took specific observations, and made recommendations on areas of pages that did not meet expectations of each category.
What did we learn from Heuristics?
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We found that the overall credibility of the current state of the portal needed the most attention.
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This mainly involved providing the key information more front and center.
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Because our main focus is on incorporating the AI fitting feature, we looked closely at the Upload screen.
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Need more visual instruction, like tips for taking photos.
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Indicators for what the camera captures, so people know their photo is approved.
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Value of the AI fitting process, to increase trust.
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User Testing: The Existing Portal
Before we got into designing, we conducted user testing to see how people experience the current Concha Labs checkout portal. Users received a scenario , and two tasks to follow. We captured easiness ratings, time in tasks, and overall feedback.
Scenario: You were recently diagnosed with mild hearing loss, so you signed up for Concha Labs! You are very excited to try the AI feature that can automatically figure out your ear size for your first pair of hearing pods.
5 Users
2 Timed Tasks
Meaurements
1. Find out more about the Concha Membership and what it entails.
Score Averages
Easiness Rating :
2.3
Time on Task:
1min 16 seconds
Success Rate:
40%
2. Ensure a pair of black hearables is in your cart.
Score Averages
Easiness Rating :
4.2
Time on Task:
17 seconds
Success Rate:
100%
What did we learn?
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Improve text readability through re-organizing content, synthesizing longer paragraphs, adjusting color contrast, font size and legibility.
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Provide more emphasis on fitting experience, so that users will want to go through the process and find that it is a cool and helpful feature.
Walking Through the Users Steps
Our team mapped out the user flow for the task of purchasing a pair of hearing pods. We specifically focused on the “Upload” screen within the full check-out process where users can either use the upload button or the site’s built-in camera system to provide a photo of their frontal and profile.
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When creating a user flow, we realized that:
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There are no clear pathways to execute on uploading more than one image or taking more than one photo.
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2. There are also no clear confirmations that the photo meets the requirements or has been uploaded successfully.
Designing for Concha Labs
Early Stages of Design
We conducted Feature Prioritization, MoSCow Mapping and an enriching design studio session with our client to determine some key features we wanted to include in our final design.
What insights led to key features for our design?
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It is imperative that hearing aids work and fit properly >> Increase the user’s knowledge on how the technology works. Incorporating visual indications of pictures that were captured successfully in the fitting process.
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Users find websites over marketed, creating uneasiness & distrust >> Seamlessly integrate the online fitting software & communicating its efficacy.
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Users need to speak with an informed individual >> The website can support users’ questions & shopping process through real-time communication.
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Shopping for hearing aids cater mostly to older people >> Increase the delightfulness and helpfulness within the site, to appeal to a wider age range.
Hi Fidelity Designing
Once we established a solid foundation on what key features we wanted to include within the new design, we began to design the new Concha Labs portal.
User Testing: The Final Design
To ensure our new designs were effective, we conducted a second round of user testing on our new prototype design. This time we added one more task, to see how users navigated new new fitting process that we just implemented.
7 Users
3 Timed Tasks
Meaurements
1. Find out more information about what the Concha Membership entails and it's cost.
Score Averages
Easiness Rating:
3.9
+ 1.6
Time on Task
50.9 seconds
- 25.1s
Success Rate:
71%
+31%
2. Complete the fitting process.
Score Averages
Easiness Rating:
4.7
Time on Task
1 min 14 seconds
Success Rate:
100%
3. Ensure a pair of black hearables is in your cart, and complete the checkout process.
Score Averages
Easiness Rating:
4.9
+ 0.7
Time on Task
44.6 seconds
+27.6 s
Success Rate:
100%
+0%
What were the effects of our data driven changes?​
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By moving the Concha Membership details to the welcome page, we saw a 31% increase in success rates.
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100% of users that we tested were able to successfully complete the new implemented fitting process.
Creating a Responsive Mobile Design
We were tasked with creating a mobile responsive version of Concha Labs beta portal, with the newly implemented AI technology. Here are some mobile versions of the hi-fidelity screens.
Preparing the Handoff to Concha Labs
Before handing off all of research and designs to the client, we included a StyleGuide. The style guide is the technical and visual element documentation that make up the branding of the product. This includes color palette, Figma components, typography, and other visual elements.
Colors
Typography
Components
Whats Next for Concha Labs?
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Vibrations on mobile devices to help with indication of photos being taken during the fitting process.
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More models on the site, specifically a larger age range of people wearing hearing pods and a larger demographic of people wearing them.
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More transparency and information regarding the concha membership (tiers, price points, cancellation options, etc).
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More engaging and interesting visuals, such as video tutorials, GIFs, fun transitions, 3D view of hearing pods, and virtual try-ons.
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Another round of user testing & heuristics, to make further iterations on the design.
