Welcome back to The Designer Will See You Now podcast, where we talk health, design, and advocacy. Most healthtech conversations focus on the next 'cool' product that promises to revolutionize how we approach health. But… we rarely talk about the one thing that actually determines if people will use it: and that’s how it makes them feel. Today, we're talking about the stigma that prevents people from seeking help in the first place. Were you ever teased for wearing glasses, or picked on for using an inhaler? These experiences can build lifelong hesitancy towards using these products. Today’s guest, Nick Morgan-Jones, understands this well: as a product designer with hearing loss, he is on a mission to build hearing tech  - for people who don’t want to wear hearing aids. With 10 years of design experience under his belt, Nick is launching Overtone to tackle the stigma and do for hearing technology what branding did for glasses. Join us to talk about how Nick’s personal journey inspires his designs, the insidious power of stigma, and how Overtone challenges our preconceptions about the hearing loss experience. 

Show Notes 🖊️

• To learn more about Overtone, sign up to be the first to hear about the launch at https://www.overtone.so/ 

• 04:57 Nick cites that the average time it takes for people who find out they could benefit from hearing technology to actually getting hearing aids is 7-11 years. This statistic is corroborated by a 2019 study from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which concluded an average of 8.9 years https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6363915/ 

• 06:41 The first hearing aids Nick wore consistently were Phonak Lyric, which are designed to be completely invisible https://www.phonak.com/en-us/hearing-devices/hearing-aids/lyric 

• 13:42 We discuss the ‘curb-cut effect,’ a phenomenon where disability-friendly features, originally designed for individuals with disabilities, provide significant, unexpected benefits to the general public. The name comes from a 1972 initiative by the city of Berkeley, California to install the first ‘curb-cuts’ into sidewalks, after pressure from disability activists. https://ssir.org/articles/entry/the_curb_cut_effect 

Chapters 📖

00:00-01:39 Intro

01:40-04:56 Nick’s hearing loss experience and its impact on his design work

04:57-07:28 Hesitancy about ‘accepting’ your disability

07:29-11:42 Recognizing the impact of stigma in healthtech

11:43-16:39 Why designing ‘for disability’ benefits everyone

16:40-21:00 Who gets to decide how assistive tech looks?

21:01-29:14 Starting Overtone and early design challenges

29:15-32:43 The technology behind Overtone

32:44-37:03 Rejecting ‘one style fits all’ for assistive tech

37:04-38:38 Designing for ears is stupidly difficult

38:39-41:22 Nick’s unique marketing strategy as a small startup

41:23-46:46 Recontextualizing Overtone as designer hearing tech

46:47-50:14 When your brand becomes the product category

50:15-51:06 Outro