My PhD: Thesis pending late 2023…
The working title of this PhD is: Exploring hearing aids and super normal design.
The intent of this project is to challenge prevalent visions for the future of hearing aid design: that they will either ‘disappear’ through miniaturisation, or else by appearing to be something other than a hearing aid, whether mainstream consumer electronics or (perhaps more decoratively) jewellery. And to challenge the implication that this disappearance – even if possible – would be a positive outcome for everyone concerned.
The research has explored themes of stigma and visual identity as part of understanding the different social and cultural relationships that exist in both disability studies and design – and the absence of disability theory, present currently, in hearing aids.
The research process has deeply involved the experiences and perspectives of hearing aid wearers, non-wearers, health care professionals and manufacturers of hearing aids.
In response (yet also as a mode of inquiry) I have explored super normal design as practice: defined as the design of everyday objects that fit into our lives so comfortably as to usually go unnoticed (another, more subtle form of invisibility, in a way). By which we mean the design of hearing aids that are in some ways archetypical hearing aids and recognisable as such, yet at the same time understated, and subtly and beautifully resolved. Good design meeting radical disability studies theory: That we don’t all want to be ‘fixed’ we just want to BE.
Some early research questions included:
How does the experience of wearing hearing aids differ across hard of hearing, deafened and D/deaf users?
What decisions are wearers making with regards to passing, covering (Goffman) and uncovering? (Heather Dawn Evans) And in what way does ‘stigma’ affect these decisions?
What role can design play in challenging ‘stigma’ associated with hearing aids and hearing loss?
How can the design of hearing aids better represent the identity of their wearers?
What would a super normal hearing aid look like? And who might wear one?
A very simple thesis study summary of what I did:
ethnography (through volunteering at Tayside Deaf Hub)
More indepth ethnography through interviews and making prototype concept hearing aids
(at the same time) Learning level one BSL [me, sign, slowly]
Humble contribution through writing and visualising about ‘things’ to theory about super normal while realising my own practice is and isn’t reaaally “Super Normal” (yet)
5 day ‘residency’ … ‘internship?’ at Jasper Morrison studio in London [while hyperventilating the whole time pre-presenting at Dutch Design week 2018?2019?]
More making of stuff and things and more reflecting. For further information/if you want to get in touch…
k.f.brown@dundee.ac.uk
P.S. Feel free to ask me about my thesis (it’s not yet ‘out’ or shareable… so maybe more folk asking verbally will be the needed ‘kick up the a***’ I need to get it handed in…)
KtB.
what katie made next. 