INDUSTRY NEWS
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The Zōn hearing aid was designed to facilitate battery changing.
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The design firm Stuart Karten Design (SKD; Marina del Rey, CA, USA; www.kartendesign.com) has recently been honoured with a number of awards. In late 2008, the consultancy received the North American Innovation in Medical Device Service Award from Frost & Sullivan. According to Frost & Sullivan, SKD’s portfolio of medical devices demonstrates how the design consultancy has successfully commercialized new medical technology in ways that simultaneously produce revenue growth for manufacturers and improve healthcare for patients and practitioners.
The design firm also won three prestigious design awards for its work on the Zōn hearing aid for Starkey Laboratories: the People’s Design Award, presented by the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum; the Spark Design Award; and the CES Innovations Award. Zōn competed with 276 products on the People’s Design Award Web site located at http://peoplesdesignaward.cooperhewitt.org, where thousands of users voted for their favourite designs. The CES Innovations Award was announced in January at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, NV, USA.
“Our research revealed that hearing-impaired people live in denial for up to eight years before getting their first hearing aid,” company founder Stuart Karten explains. “The reason: they associate the traditional beige, shrimp-shaped hearing aid with weakness and disability.” Consequently, Karten sought to move the perception of the hearing aid from a medical appliance to an object that would help overcome the stigma associated with hearing loss. “This award from the public is a tremendous validation that Zōn has achieved its goal,” he adds.
The hearing aid features a tactile control area that is designed to be easy to access when worn behind the ear. In addition, the design also is said to simplify the battery-changing process, which has historically been a common gripe among hearing-aid wearers. “We’ve designed the battery door so that users can lay the hearing aid on the table during loading for extra stability,” says Anne Dickhoff, manager of public relations and marketing at Stuart Karten Design. More people in the medical field now recognize the value that research-focused design can bring to a medical product,” Karten says. “As a result, there are more people engaging with us to help them drive innovation and get a competitive edge.”
Karten, a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, founded his studio in 1984 after stints at Gould Medical and Baxter. Since it was founded, SKD has received more than 70 awards. In 2004, Karten was named by sister publication MD&DI magazine as one of industry’s 100 notable people.
