Designasterisk

Widex Inteo hearing aid in translucent black

I’ve recently been experiencing the acquisition of a new set of hearing aids, two Widex Inteos. I had my previous hearing aid (Oticon Adapto) for about 5-6 years, and it was conking out on me, sputtering from repair to repair. I finally made the decision to go for hearing aids in both ears (binaural), which has been long recommended to me by audiologists. I understood the argument behind it very well, in that your ears and brain are designed to hear in stereo, and so trying to get amplification through just one ear was providing a lot less improvement than I could be getting. The benefit of two aids over one is supposed to be an exponential improvement.

But as a longtime user of hearing aids, I want to make a few observations about what I see as the significant obstacles to getting, using, and enjoying the benefit of hearing aids. These are the barriers that made me wait a lot longer than I should have to get a hearing aid in the first place, and have prevented me from trying two aids until now.

First, there’s the cost/investment side. Hearing aids, particularly the new digital technologies, are extremely expensive. The type that my hearing loss requires usually run in the neighborhood of $2,500-3,000. Each. Multiply that times two, and you’re talking about wearing an enormous sum in delicate electronic devices on your head (which are subject to damage or breakage from dropping or getting caught on something, getting wet, or being exposed to radiation or chemicals.) In short, the value of a mid-range Rolex, with none of the durability. And the standard hearing aid is not expected to have a shelf life beyond 5 years. That’s an investment of $100 a month, if you’re lucky enough not to break or lose one during that time. And no, health insurance does not cover hearing aids and the warranties typically cover only the first 1-2 years. Therefore, there is a strong financial consideration to be made between making do with just one hearing aid, or splurging on two.

Second, there is the appearance/design factor. I’ve been wearing hearing aids since I started college. I have been hard of hearing my whole life, but I had learned enough coping strategies as a child, like lipreading and defaulting to writing and pictures whenever possible, that I was able to compensate fairly well through my school years with the help of teachers and friends. That changed when I went out into the larger world, away from home and familiar surroundings. The primary thing that kept me from taking advantage of a hearing aid before that is the stigma associated to how ugly and strange these devices look. As a hard of hearing person, you already feel like an outsider. As a kid, I was terrified by the idea of drawing more attention to my disability (as I’m sure most hard-of-hearing children and adults are).
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It’s not often that I write a letter to the CEO of a company to provide insight to my experience with their organization. In fact, it takes quite a bit to get me off of my, shall we say, “correspondance” ass. However, the stars aligned and I was compelled to send out a two page analysis about my experience in trying to do international banking with Citigroup.

In January of this year, Angela and I moved to Chicago for my graduate program. We’d been living and working in Sydney for the last three years and wanted to keep our money in Australia, as the interest rates are quite favourable and the dollar is, to put it frankly, tanking. I had looked into banks that offered international banking, and Citibank seemed perfect. Key to our needs was the fact that bank-to-bank transfers between countries would not incur any fees.

It didn’t go well at all and in the end I had to close our account. Due to system problems in Citibank Australia, We had no ability to move any of our funds outside of the country. I spent weeks working with their customer service group to no avail. The problem basically came down to the fact that their phone system had trouble calling my cell phone (we don’t have a land line at home). Because of this, their security process couldn’t work. It didn’t matter that I could call them on the phone, verify it was me through their security screening, and that I could transfer money anywhere in Australia. Since their automated system couldn’t call my cell phone, I was not allowed to access my money. A dire set of circumstances indeed.

Now, as much as I like to bitch about bad customer experience, that’s not my point here. As a designer, I know what it is like to work on both sides of this issue. I know the limitations that the customer service representatives are under. I know the archaic computer systems that banks work within. I know that the ability to “do the right thing” is the last thing large companies enable their staff to do. So why write a letter?

To be honest, because I was pretty sure the CEO didn’t know what was going on right under his nose.

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There is an interesting article in the Chicago Tribune this morning regarding a new milk jug that has just been rolled out to Wal-Mart and Costco. I won’t get into all the specifics of what’s good and bad about the introduction – but suffice to say that the product designers had one customer in mind: Milk producers and distributors.

Whether you’ve realized it or not, milk is expensive to ship, and a lot of that expense has been dictated by the type of plastic container that’s typically been used for a gallon of milk. Because of the shape, it is not possible to stack for shipment, thus requiring crates. These crates carry a lot of unused space and that increases the inefficiency of transporting milk cheaply. With fuel cost rising and food cost increasing as well, making successful cost savings to packaging can have a big impact. In fact, the new jugs lower the cost of a gallon of milk from $2.58 a gallon to $2.18 (a savings of just over 15%). Not only that, the new design has cut labor in half and water use (for cleaning the crates which birds love to roost in) by 60 to 70 percent. So, lower fuel use, lower water use, cheaper to purchase, and more convenient to stack and store. What’s not to like?

Well, for one thing, it doesn’t work for the customer.

It seems that the jug is extremely difficult to pour from and almost impossible for children to use. Costco even has a representatives demonstating the use of the jug in store who informs shoppers that the correct pouring technique is a “rock-and-pour instead of a lift-and-tip.” Shoppers are not convinced.

Of course with any big change to a common product there will be initial resistance to adoption. But the issue that I find interesting and all too common is that it was obvious that a large amount of effort was put into redesigning an artifact that affects a great deal of people. But, as is all too often the case, the goal of the design was short-sighted. Milk producers pretty much nailed the design requirements for stacking, transport, and resource savings. But did anyone consider those that need to actually use the product that is being shipped? It seems impossible that the designers, or even those who sponsored the change, didn’t try to use the jug themselves. So it appears that it was decided that if anyone needed to compromise on usability, it would be the people who had to use the jug day to day.

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This whole thing with the airlines charging for bags. Call it short-sighted or wrong-headed, it really seems like a bad solution. Or at least, the airlines aren’t considering the full spectrum of the problem. They are seeing the problem only through the lens of fuel costs, and not at all through the lens of customer experience. I predict that the recent changes to the fee structure is going to cost the airlines more trouble than it is worth.

When I first heard about American Airlines adding charges to checked bags (with other airlines following suit), I shuddered. Let’s face it, there are a lot of things that prompt flyers to avoid checking bags these days, and it’s only gotten worse with post-9/11 security measures. Between the airlines and the TSA, checking bags is a pretty awful aspect of customer experience in air travel. And now they expect people to pay for this experience.

There are three reasons people avoid checking bags. The first is that the airlines make it just too difficult to deposit your bags. The queues at airport check-in are typically terrible and often force you to risk missing your flight. I’ve had many experiences arriving 90 minutes to 2 hours early to the airport, only to barely make my flight because I spent so much time waiting to check my bags. The check-in counters are never adequately staffed and are clearly one of the first places to suffer when airlines cut back on costs. It is much easier and faster to go straight to security with your over-stuffed rolling bag and directly to the plane.

The second reason has to do with handling. We’re all suspicious of what happens to our bags once they disappear down the conveyor belt. How many times is that bag going to be dropped, kicked, crushed, nicked, or even searched in its time moving onto and off of the plane? Especially now that we know that airport employees can open and search our bags with impunity, there is a level of violation associated with leaving your luggage in the hands of the airline. Of course, we all want to travel safe, and are happy to have potentially dangerous items checked and removed from other people’s luggage. But you can’t help but feel personally affronted by all the abuse your bags get.

The third reason has to do with recovery, or baggage claim. The airlines will say this is the airport’s fault, not theirs. But it is confounding how long it can take for your bags to reach the conveyor belt in baggage claim. And if the airlines can’t control this part of the experience, do they have a right to charge extra for bag handling?

Now, if I’m paying an explicit fee to check my bags, I will have an expectation that all three of these things will be improved as a service I am specifically paying for. Are the airlines prepared to deliver on this? I doubt it.

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