I was hired by Snugs to help design an AI-powered solution to make custom fitted hearing protection more accessible. My expertise in user experience and designing around complex technologies helped them realise their vision.

Snugs PhotoFit has revolutionised the hearing protection market and is now used by companies and individuals across the world.

Snugs is pioneering the future of hearing protection through a combination of advanced 3D modelling, 3D silicon printing and changeable filters. But there’s always been a big barrier - custom fitting for this type of hearing protection needed to be done by a trained professional. It’s time-consuming and costly to scale. My expertise in product and service design and user experience helped create a solution to make custom fitting cheaper, scalable and more accessible.

There were multiple challenges to solve and it required a first-principles approach coupled with a deep understanding of service design, user experience and advanced technologies.

We worked closely with AI specialists to answer two complex questions:

How can a person measure their ears accurately enough to generate a 3D model - without a physical mould.

How will the end-to-end process work from placing an order to generating their virtual ear models for production.

Leveraging our expertise in user experience and services design, we implemented a multi-faceted approach:

Architected a suite of connected services including e-commerce, AI platform, APIs, mobile web app

Mapped the end-to-end service and user flows

Created prototypes for user testing to refine all parts

Designed and built a mobile web app integrated with the AI

Designed a custom fitting pack to be used in the process

Refined error handling and resolution with AI team

Integrated the AI with Shopify and Klaviyo for order process management

Presented at CES twice and garnered huge interest

Been used by thousands of customers around the world

Achieved a 10x reduction in custom fitting costs

Helped secure additional funding for global rollout

Awarded multiple international patents