Breaking the Sound Barrier: Designing for Patient Participation in Audiological Consultations

This paper explores how interactive technology can help overcome barriers to active patient participation in audiological consultations involving hearing aid tuning. We describe the design and evaluation of a prototype sound simulator intended to trigger reflection in patients regarding their hearing experiences, and help guide the tuning process. The prototype was tested in twelve consultations. Our findings suggest that it helped facilitate patient participation during the tuning process by: (1) encouraging an iterative, patient-driven approach; (2) stimulating context-specific feedback and follow-up questions; (3) helping patients make sense of medical information and treatment actions; (4) offering patient control over the process pace and what situations to optimize for; and (5) promoting reflections on daily hearing aid use. Post-consultation interviews revealed that the prototype was perceived useful in several ways. Our results highlight the benefit of flexible designs that can be appropriated to fit the spontaneous needs of patients and audiologists