GN Hearing | Designit
Redefining Hearing Aids for a Lifestyle Market
Product discovery.
Context
For decades, rigid clinical barriers left millions with mild to moderate hearing loss unserved. This changed in 2022 when landmark FDA regulations established a new category of over-the-counter hearing aids.
This shift transformed a prescription only device into an accessible consumer product, opening a massive market opportunity for GN to reach the nearly 30 million Americans with mild to moderate hearing loss.
Solution
The core challenge wasn’t technical but psychological. People experiencing mild-to-moderate hearing loss actively resisted the idea of a hearing aid, associating the devices with age, disability, and stigma. Reaching this audience meant understanding how they perceived their own hearing and designing a solution that felt like a premium lifestyle choice rather than a medical concession.
The Jabra Enhance Plus was designed around lifestyle integration and autonomous setup. I lead a team at Designit through a multi-phase research program identifying critical US market insights, developing target personas, shaping the market position and value proposition, and reframing the product around self-awareness, discretion, and lifestyle fit.
This shaped a "hearable" that looked and felt like premium earbuds, supported by a companion application designed for easy setup, personal calibration, and smart sound features
Impact
Jabra Enhance Plus launched in the US in February 2022, achieving top-10 rankings and strong adoption among first-time OTC hearing aid users. The project gave GN a clear, validated view of exactly who the product was for and the strategic confidence to enter a new market on their own terms.
My Role:
As client owner, I led the engagement, orchestrating a complex stakeholder landscape across R&D, product management, and regional sales, while guiding a cross-disciplinary design team through a multi-phase process. I co-developed the qualitative research strategy in the US, shaped the market segmentation, and defined the target personas. From there, I contributed to the solution definition, industrial design direction, and UX strategy, and crafted the value proposition and messaging tailored to those personas.
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