Hello blog,
Today I will tell the story of when bad design caused my little brother to go to the emergency room this summer. Before we can get into the details we need some background.
Growing up my little brother has always had ear problems. In fact, he had to get a tube put into his ear because his eardrum was too close to his ear bones and getting stuck to it. He had been in and out of emergency ear visits and custom ear plugs from a really young age. For the last 3-4 years though he hasn't had any real issue aside from the occasional infection which is normal for those of us with non-tubular ears. That said, we can return to the story.
So here I am laying in bed sleeping when my little brother busts into my room at around 3am saying that he is deaf in one ear. Unfortunately for him I was mid-REM and only the good graciousness of Allah got me to situp in bed and blearily look at his ear. From what I saw there was nothing...so I told him to ask Mom and went to sleep.
Two hours later I was in the car taking my increasingly more pained brother to the emergency room. He goes in and gets checked out only to find that he had the plastic bit of an ear bud stuck in his ear!!
Instant relief...from the pain that is. The design though...has stuck with me like a thorn in my side.
Its true that these ear buds did follow the principles of good design understanding the task and goal of the ear buds was to conveniently transit sound to a person in more readily available and compact way. The design is sleek and accounts for constraints such as ear hole size by providing removable tips that accommodate for all different kinds of ear shapes but despite this I can't help but feel that their means of executing this holistic view fall short when trying to make informed tradeoffs.
By adding this versatility to accommodate one ear phone for all ear types, of course this is more cost efficient but it also causes the earbud to fall out of the ear more often or causes the bud to detach from the headphone causing loss of bud or even an ear choke-down. The trade-off wasn't worth it in my opinion. I would have iterated back to Protoypes in the approach and try again until they had a proper headphone fit for portable and exercise use but also safe for heavy use.
The question I leave with this blog entry is whether or not the versatility and cost efficiency of the exchangeable headphone earbud heads are a worthy tradeoff for the integrity of the earpiece if they were made as single pieces in different sizes?
Designing off,
Ahmed Mustafa
Today I will tell the story of when bad design caused my little brother to go to the emergency room this summer. Before we can get into the details we need some background.
Growing up my little brother has always had ear problems. In fact, he had to get a tube put into his ear because his eardrum was too close to his ear bones and getting stuck to it. He had been in and out of emergency ear visits and custom ear plugs from a really young age. For the last 3-4 years though he hasn't had any real issue aside from the occasional infection which is normal for those of us with non-tubular ears. That said, we can return to the story.
So here I am laying in bed sleeping when my little brother busts into my room at around 3am saying that he is deaf in one ear. Unfortunately for him I was mid-REM and only the good graciousness of Allah got me to situp in bed and blearily look at his ear. From what I saw there was nothing...so I told him to ask Mom and went to sleep.
Two hours later I was in the car taking my increasingly more pained brother to the emergency room. He goes in and gets checked out only to find that he had the plastic bit of an ear bud stuck in his ear!!
Instant relief...from the pain that is. The design though...has stuck with me like a thorn in my side.
Its true that these ear buds did follow the principles of good design understanding the task and goal of the ear buds was to conveniently transit sound to a person in more readily available and compact way. The design is sleek and accounts for constraints such as ear hole size by providing removable tips that accommodate for all different kinds of ear shapes but despite this I can't help but feel that their means of executing this holistic view fall short when trying to make informed tradeoffs.
By adding this versatility to accommodate one ear phone for all ear types, of course this is more cost efficient but it also causes the earbud to fall out of the ear more often or causes the bud to detach from the headphone causing loss of bud or even an ear choke-down. The trade-off wasn't worth it in my opinion. I would have iterated back to Protoypes in the approach and try again until they had a proper headphone fit for portable and exercise use but also safe for heavy use.
The question I leave with this blog entry is whether or not the versatility and cost efficiency of the exchangeable headphone earbud heads are a worthy tradeoff for the integrity of the earpiece if they were made as single pieces in different sizes?
Designing off,
Ahmed Mustafa
Reading this made me incredibly concerned for your little brother. I think that in the long run, the point of earbuds is, as you said, to transit sound readily and compactly to a person, and if pieces of said earbud are going to get stuck in people's ears and cause hospital visits, then manufacturers should stick to a single piece design.
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