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HearHopper
Helping parents monitor and support their child’s auditory health through simple, accessible tools.
FOCUS
Product Strategy · UX Research · IA · Interaction Design · UI Design · Prototyping
ROLE
Lead Product Designer (0→1)
TIMELINE
3 Months
DEMO
Auditory health monitoring remains reactive
Current auditory health monitoring relies heavily on periodic clinical assessments, providing only isolated snapshots of a child’s hearing development. Between appointments, parents have limited tools to track progress, identify concerns, or understand whether intervention may be needed.
This lack of continuous monitoring creates a critical visibility gap. Potential hearing challenges may remain unnoticed for months, delaying support during key stages of speech, learning, and cognitive development. The opportunity was to transform auditory health from a reactive, clinic-centered process into a proactive and engaging experience that empowers both families and healthcare professionals.
Key Challenges
⭬ No continuous tracking system
⭬ High reliance on clinical visits
⭬ Limited tools for early detection
Understanding Users & Insights
Designing HearHopper required understanding the needs of both children and parents, while also considering the reliability expectations of healthcare-related experiences.
Children (2–12 years)
⭬ Need simple and engaging interactions
⭬ Respond better to guided visual feedback
⭬ Need low-friction, easy-to-use experiences
Parents
⭬ Need clear and trustworthy results
⭬ Want visibility into progress over time
⭬ Require reliable home assessments
Clinical Insights from Audiologists
Early signs of hearing issues are often missed without regular monitoring. Reliable testing depends on clear guidance and controlled interactions, while parents need support interpreting results outside clinical environments.
Designing for children required simplicity and engagement, while parents needed clarity and trust — making it essential to balance usability with credibility.
– Key Insight
Design Process Across 13 Weeks
HearHopper evolved through continuous research, iterative exploration, usability testing, and collaborative refinement across a 13-week development cycle.
01
Research & Discovery
Conducting exploratory research to understand auditory health challenges, user behaviors, accessibility concerns, and existing gaps in at-home monitoring experiences.
02
Problem Framing & Information Architecture
Defining core usability challenges, mapping user journeys, and structuring guided auditory testing and parent-facing flows into a clear experience framework.
03
Design System & Experience Foundation
Creating the visual system, interaction patterns, and foundational UI components to support a consistent and child-friendly product experience.
04
Feature Exploration & User Testing
Exploring key product features through iterative design concepts, interaction testing, and early user feedback to improve usability and engagement.
05
Final UI, Usability & Heuristic Evaluation
Refining high-fidelity designs through usability reviews and heuristic evaluations to ensure clarity, accessibility, trust, and interaction consistency.
06
Dev Team Handoff & Final Iteration
Collaborating through implementation reviews, bug resolution, and final refinements following Version 1 development before capstone presentation.
HearHopper: Test, Train & Track Auditory Health
HearHopper is a mobile application that helps children complete guided auditory assessments while enabling parents to monitor hearing progress through a simple and intuitive experience.
Turning Auditory Care Into A Connected Experience
HearHopper was designed as a guided auditory health experience that supports both children and parents through structured testing, progress tracking, and accessible insights. The experience focuses on simplifying auditory assessments while making hearing progress easier to understand and monitor over time.
Experience Flow
The journey map below illustrates how children interact with guided auditory activities while parents monitor results, progress, and auditory insights through a connected experience.
Core Features
HearHopper combines guided auditory assessments, environmental awareness tools, interactive training, and progress tracking into a connected experience designed to support both children and parents through accessible and understandable auditory care.
01
Guided Auditory Test
A child-friendly auditory assessment experience designed to simplify pure-tone testing through guided interactions and accessible feedback.
02
Environmental Noise Check
Analyzes surrounding noise levels before testing to improve accuracy and help parents create safer auditory environments.
03
Ear Masking Training
Interactive listening exercises designed to help children identify sounds in noisy environments and strengthen auditory focus.
04
Progress Tracking & Profiles
Allows parents to track hearing progress over time, manage child profiles, and identify patterns through clear and understandable insights.
Designing For Clarity, Trust, And Accessibility
01
Simplicity First
Interactions were designed to reduce cognitive load for children through guided actions, clear feedback, and minimal complexity.
02
Trust Through Clarity
The experience prioritized understandable results, transparent flows, and approachable healthcare communication for parents.
03
Accessibility By Design
Visual hierarchy, readable typography, and interaction consistency were considered to create an inclusive and easy-to-navigate experience.
Design System
A scalable design system was created to ensure consistency across interactions, improve accessibility, and support faster product iteration. Design tokens for color, typography, spacing, and components helped establish a cohesive visual language while maintaining readability, usability, and child-friendly interaction patterns throughout the experience.
Reinforcing Actions Through Motion
Subtle motion and interaction feedback were designed to guide attention, reinforce user actions, and create a more engaging auditory experience while maintaining clarity and minimizing distraction for children.
Simplifying Through Iteration
Early concepts and wireframes evolved through continuous refinement focused on reducing cognitive load, improving interaction clarity, and creating more intuitive flows for children and parents throughout the product experience.
Reducing Complexity Through Usability Decisions
Simplicity & Usability
The challenge was to design an interaction that children can easily understand and complete without confusion or errors. The initial interaction relied on a gesture-based input, which introduced friction and made the experience difficult to follow, especially for younger users.
Guided Interaction Design
The interaction was redesigned into a guided, single-tap experience that simplifies user actions and reduces cognitive load. This approach removes unnecessary complexity, allowing users to focus on listening rather than figuring out how to interact. As a result, the experience becomes more intuitive, accessible, and reliable for children.
Clarity in Results
The challenge was to make hearing test results understandable for both children and parents. Earlier, results were presented as a combined graph, making them difficult to interpret and less actionable. The redesigned experience separates results for each ear and introduces a simplified scoring system, allowing users to quickly understand hearing performance through clear visual feedback.
Simplified Scoring System
To improve clarity, a simplified scoring system was introduced to translate hearing thresholds into an easy-to-understand percentage score. This allows parents to quickly interpret results without needing medical knowledge, while maintaining accuracy.
Designed Around Children, Built For Parents
HearHopper delivers a guided auditory care experience designed to simplify hearing assessments, environmental awareness, and progress tracking for children and parents through accessible and engaging interactions.
From Concept To Continued Development
HearHopper evolved beyond an academic capstone into an award-recognized product experience shaped through research, iterative design, and continued development.
Product Direction & Priorities
HearHopper’s experience strategy focused on balancing accessibility, trust, and engagement to support both children and parents throughout the auditory care journey. This product direction guided interaction design decisions, usability improvements, and the overall structure of the experience.
Recognition & Continued Development
HearHopper received the “Market-Ready Marvel Award” at the Langara College Capstone Showcase for its practical and accessibility-focused approach to children’s auditory health. Following the showcase, the project was also approved for the NSERC Idea to Innovation (I2I) Grant in 2025, supporting continued exploration and development beyond the academic environment.
“Working on HearHopper changed the way I think about product design. I learned that designing for healthcare is not just about simplifying interfaces, but about reducing uncertainty for the people relying on them. Balancing the emotional needs of parents, the usability needs of children, and the credibility expected from healthcare experiences pushed me to design with far greater intention, clarity, and empathy.”