Tag Archives: hearing aid

Olive Union’s AI-Powered Hearing Aids: Affordable, Stylish, and Feature-Rich

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The average price of a hearing aid in the US is upwards of $2,000. The average price of a pair of TWS Earbuds, on the other hand, is $150. Doesn’t that sound a little wrong to you? It would be like pricing prescription spectacles at thousands of dollars but selling sunglasses for a mere hundred bucks. There’s a pretty sizeable gap in price between hearing aids and TWS earbuds, but functionally, the two of them share a major overlap… so the folks at Olive Union just decided to bridge the massive price gap by designing the Olive Air, a set of AI-powered OTC (over the counter) hearing aids that look fashionable, bring ANC to the hearing-disabled community, and are priced in the sub-$250 category so that you don’t go bankrupt just to be able to regain the power of hearing.

Designer: Owen Song

Click Here to Buy Now: $229 $399 (42% off). Hurry, only 6/100 left! Raised over $100,000.

Styled to look exactly like a pair of TWS earbuds, the Olive Air shatters the notion that hearing aids need to look like medical devices. Instead of a design that often is associated with awkwardness and stigma, the Olive Air comes with a stylish aesthetic that makes them look like your average pair of earbuds. They’re designed for people with mild to moderate hearing loss and are classified as FDA Class II aids that can be sold over the counter. Wear them and select one of the AI-powered preset hearing modes to start using them for everything from hearing the world around you to having conversations, listening to music, or even taking calls from your smartphone.

Built-in microphones pick up the soundscape of your environment, and Olive Air processes the signal to create “anti noise” — an opposite soundwave that effectively cancels out the noise of your surroundings.

This design bridge between the hearing aid and the TWS Earbud isn’t just a visual one, it manifests in the Olive Air’s features too. The earbuds come with active noise cancelation that helps tune outside noise out so you can focus on your music and media. ANC is a staple feature in earbuds but is unheard of in hearing aids. The Olive Air’s ANC feature puts it in lock-step with current technologies and then goes beyond with the inclusion of AI presets. Olive Union’s custom My Olive app lets you access the hearing presets as well as tinker with your earpiece’s performance. Aside from simply adjusting the volume and EQ in each earpiece, the app’s AI-powered hearing modes allow the hearing aids to intuitively focus on certain sounds. A preset for Television focuses on directional audio coming from a TV or playback device, a Restaurant preset cuts out the chatter of everyone around you, and a Meeting Room preset accentuates the voices of active speakers.

AI supported hearing presets let you swap between different hearing settings to best match your environment. Plus, customize volume and specific frequency bands with Hearing EQ and Music EQ for a personalized listening journey.

This isn’t Olive Union’s first rodeo, the Olive Air is their third iteration of affordable, attractive, and accessible hearing aids. Founded in 2016, the company has focused on eliminating hearing aid stigma by designing hearing aids that are at par with consumer-grade earphones. To that end, the Olive Air comes with a slick design and an all-day battery life. Buttons on each earpiece help you manually adjust volume/gain, while the smartphone app gives you access to the ANC and AI presets, along with EQ adjustment. Setting up the hearing aids is a breeze too, and doesn’t require you to go to a hospital or medical professional. Once you’ve set the Olive Air up, it serves its triple purpose well, as aids to boost hearing, as hands-free earbuds for music/calls/videos, and as stylish earbuds that empower you rather than perpetuating the stigma around disability-friendly medical devices.

The Olive Air starts at a discounted $229, which includes the earbuds and charging case, 8 pairs of replaceable ear-tips (of different sizes, materials, and colors), a user manual, and a USB charging cable.

Click Here to Buy Now: $229 $399 (42% off). Hurry, only 6/100 left! Raised over $100,000.

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This stylish hearing aid inspired by open earbuds blends ergonomics and functionality

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Why do all hearing aids have to make you look old and unstylish? Why can’t they be as cool as those modern open-design earbuds? This very predicament inspired a design house to propose a hearing aid form that shifts assumptions and stereotyping. The design is backed by viable features and useful functionality that’ll make any traditional hearing aid user interested in the idea.

Meet Claro, a battery-powered, Bluetooth-connected pair of hearing aids that redefines style without compromising any aspect of functionality. Adapting the open-ear design that we’ve seen on the Bose Open Earbuds, these ergonomic hearing aids seamlessly sit on the user’s ears, sidelining the common medical gadget aesthetics for good.

Designer: Crux Product Design

The hearing aid can be connected to with upto 3 devices simultaneously – so you can connect it to your phone for taking calls, music player to listen to podcasts, or a laptop to join meetings in an instant. Those cables in arch form maximize the flexibility of use with different-shaped ears and wearing comforts. A useful feature comes in the form of inner ear biometrics that detects the Internal Carotid Artery for an unobstructed source of data.

The hearing aid is equipped with sensors to detect health and ear hygiene too. Loaded with advanced sensors for providing functions like pulse oximetry, heart rate and respiratory rate, the gadget eliminates the need for wearing a smartwatch or fitness tracker. To keep all the functions working obstruction-free, Claro can be charged in the provided case. If you are a constant user of hearing aids, you can also swap the internal replaceable batteries with a pair of rechargeable batteries to stay connected for longer without any interruptions.

We hope to see this product become a reality and that possibility cannot counted out as Crux Product Design is committed to bringing new-age solutions to their users.

The post This stylish hearing aid inspired by open earbuds blends ergonomics and functionality first appeared on Yanko Design.

Discreet hearing aid concept empowers people with hearing disabilities

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Many people try to deny experiencing physical disabilities for fear of making them look weak. This is especially true when it comes to hearing problems that people feel they can simply ignore or wave off easily. Those who do admit to having some hearing disabilities, however, are hesitant to get hearing aids that are expensive, fragile, uncomfortable, and too conspicuous, as if announcing their handicap to everyone around them. That doesn’t have to be the case, especially with today’s advancements in technology, and fortunately, some people are indeed stepping up to design a less obnoxious and more reliable hearing aid, such as this concept that tries to check all the boxes that would encourage more people to wear them and enjoy the world as it was meant to be heard.

Designers: Jitendra Kakade, Nikhil Srikrishnan, Riddhiman Dutta Choudhury

Despite how electronic components can now be so minuscule, most hearing aids still come in a large, two-piece design that, more often than not, clamps to the back of your ear. Such hearing aids are not only uncomfortable to wear, they also tend to put a very visible stigma on wearers, making them feel self-conscious and even ashamed to wear one. This leads to many owners abandoning these devices altogether, willing to sacrifice their happiness for the sake of their image.

Rezonance is a concept design that tries to think of a better solution that isn’t just more discreet but also more affordable and accessible in the long run. Instead of the typical clamping design, Rezonance employs bone conduction technology to be almost invisible. It’s a technology that is already used today on some wireless headphones, so it’s already a proven solution. By using bone conduction, there doesn’t need to be any visible part going into the person’s ear and Rezonance can stay hidden from view behind the wearer’s ear.

Instead of using clamping force to stay in place, the concept suggests an adhesive pad that’s similar to sports tape, ensuring that the material is not only waterproof but also reusable. Additionally, the components used to make the actual hearing aid are claimed to be quite cheap and easily available, which means that the final product itself doesn’t have to cost people an arm in exchange for their ear.

The design doesn’t specify whether Rezonance works only as a single piece or if you will need two for the full audio experience. Even then, it would still be a lot less cumbersome compared to the traditional hearing aid design. Of course, such a design will need to be verified first, especially by professionals, because a design that’s elegant yet ineffective will just end up disappointing and turning away people all the same.

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