Raising People's Awareness of Hearing Health with Pleasant and Interactive Hearing Test Designs Installed in Public Spaces.

Hearing loss is an emerging health challenge, but very few people check their hearing periodically. Unidentified hearing loss can lead to depression and social isolation. To improve public awareness of hearing health, we design an interactive testing system for being used in public spaces. It aims to create unexpected encounters with users and engage them in examining their hearing health regularly. We conducted two evaluations and reported the results in this paper. Firstly, we compared the hearing test results of our design and the conventional audiometry testing. The correlation is 0.78 on average. Secondly, we evaluated the user experience with 12 visitors in an art museum. The nature sounds and interactive design provided users a feeling of calm and made the testing an engaging experience. Meanwhile, the visualization triggered users’ discussions and reflections on the testing results. Overall, our design shows the potentials in raising people’s awareness of hearing health.