The Campaign

We wanted to turn this unawareness at night into extreme caution for the hearing-impaired. So, we created Hearing Rescue, the world’s first hearing aid to rescue wearers from dangers at night. It was developed from a normal hearing aid that has never been used during sleep. By wearing it on a wrist, the night mode will be activated. Built-in sound recognition will detect sound of dangers in different levels from minimum of 60 decibels and patterns such as sounds of siren, barking dog, and fire alarm. Then the device will vibrate to warn the wearer to respond to any dangers immediately.

Creative Execution

To create Hearing Rescue, we set up a crowdfunding project to raise money. Within 3 months from October – December 2016, we could gather from public 100,000 USD in total. After production, Hearing Rescue was officially launched in March 2017 and distributed to our target: people with hearing impairment and hearing aid specialists.

Results

Hearing Rescue devices were distributed nationwide to our target group: people with hearing impairment and hearing aid specialists. Shortly after the launch, it became a buzz. Not only could it reach the target successfully but also expand engagement to ordinary people: relatives of those who have hearing problem. 98% of those who tried Hearing Rescue reported that they felt more safe and can sleep without constant anxiety. Over one fifth of the hearing-impaired across the country have contacted to pre-order Hearing Rescue.

As the number of people with hearing impairment in Thailand is very small, this group has not been paid much attention. The Hearing Rescue project worked directly with this group. By utilizing what the hearing-impaired use everyday, a normal hearing aid, and combining innovative technology into it, we achieved to create Hearing Rescue, the world’s first hearing aid that could save lives. Designed to directly solve the problem that merely the hearing disabled experienced, the device not only could engage our target but also improve living condition of these people.

According to statistics collected by Ministry of Social Development and Human Society in 2016, there are 321,063 people with hearing impairment in Thailand. So, we conducted a further survey in this group and found that 100% of them take off hearing aid at night. Moreover, 35% of them said that they experienced accidents at night because they could not hear any sounds. We saw this problem as an opportunity. Since the hearing-impaired won't change the behaviour of taking off the hearing aid when they sleep, we decided to change the hearing aid instead. We transformed a normal hearing aid into a smart wristband.