Hearing Aids as Fashion Tech? Inside Overtone’s Vision for the Future

Speaker 1: Welcome to This Week in Hearing. I’m Shari Eberts. Do you ever wonder why hearing devices remain shrouded in stigma? Maybe part of the reason is that most of today’s devices look more medical than fashionable. This used to be the case with glasses too, but over time, things shifted, and glasses now come in a variety of colors and styles, so you can mix and match them based on your mood or your outfit. And today’s guest, Nick Morgan-Jones, is trying to do the same for hearing aids. Nick has hearing loss, so he gets it. And like many people with hearing loss, he was frustrated with today’s limited options for the way hearing aids could look and feel, and that’s why he started Overtone, a new brand looking to reimagine hearing aids as a fashion-forward lifestyle tech. I like the way that sounds. And he’s making some progress. So thank you, Nick, for being here today.

Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 1: Absolutely. So every person with hearing loss has a story. So I was hoping we could get started just you sharing a bit of yours for the viewers and how that journey has led to Overtone.

Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. So I was about 10 years old when I found out I needed hearing aids. I think I was actually in class. I can remember this. My, my alarm was going off on my watch, and one of the teachers was saying, “Whose alarm’s going off?” And I was like, “Yeah, whose alarm’s going off?” it was my alarm. I had no idea.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: I couldn’t hear it. It was a really high-pitched beep. And I learned I had high-frequency hearing loss, and I’ve got relatively severe high-frequency hearing loss. The low frequencies are pretty normal. They’re kind of classically downward-sloping curve. Mine is relatively steep. And I wore hearing aids for maybe like three days when I got them, and then very quickly decided that I would rather have friends and did not want to be the kid at school wearing hearing aids. So I took them off, and I avoided wearing hearing aids for the next 10 years. The whole way through kind of being a teen and so many important kind of really, like, yeah, like, really profound moments in my kind of upbringing, I think I really struggled to, to hear. I think in social situations it was particularly difficult. And not even a tiny part of me considered wearing hearing aids, even though they were just sat in a drawer at home the whole time. And it’s, it’s just, I find it like an interesting thing that stigma can be like so strong that it prevents people from doing what is really on paper obviously the, the right thing to do. Like, yeah, just solve the problem. It’s quite simple. But I’m really not the only person who’s going through that same thing. I think we’re, many of us are aware that over 80% of people who, whose lives could be transformed by hearing aids don’t wear them. There’s many reasons why that might be, but I’m pretty convinced that the largest reason is the social stigma that we have around hearing technology. And so that really kind of led me to look for a solution here. I’ve always kind of been envious of people who get to wear designer glasses. It’s kind of a weird thing. Like if I could trade my poor hearing for, for poor eyesight, I would immediately do it. And with that in mind, I thought, why can’t we just, why can’t we just change how hearing technology is designed, how it works?

Speaker 1: I love that idea.

Speaker 2: that’s how it began.

Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that idea. I mean, I struggled with the same stigma. It was more in my 20s when I first realized that I wasn’t hearing well also in class. Funny, funny, it wasn’t an alarm, but it was, I just couldn’t really follow the conversation as well as all the other students were, were following it. So it’s interesting how you have this aha moment. But again, that, that stigma really prevented me from doing what I need to do to take care of my hearing as well. So talk a little bit about what makes Overtones different from traditional hearing aids.

Speaker 2: So fundamentally, the absolute core difference is that we are not trying to hide hearing technology. I think this is the number one thing in the industry that has maybe forced the industry to shoot itself in the foot in one way or another. There is this idea that stigma is the problem, but I think that really comes from the industry when the whole industry is telling you that you should be trying to hide your hearing aids, when all of the different adverts say, “Discretion is really important. These are super discreet. No one will ever see them,” all it’s doing is reinforcing and really making the stigma problem even worse. It’s telling people that they should be ashamed to wear hearing, hearing technology. And so the one core difference that this whole project started with is let’s not try and hide it. Let’s make it visible. It’s only possible to make something accepted and cool if it is visible. It’s impossible to make something invisible desirable for its visibility. So let’s start from that point. So fundamentally, the key difference is that we put it in front of the ear. It’s not something that sits in the ear like hearing aids sorry, like headphones, like AirPods and such.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: The key issue there being that if you’re sitting around the dinner table wearing your AirPods, people don’t really know if you’re 100% there or if you’re listening to music or a, pocast

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: or something like that. And so I think having a completely different form factor that’s not hearing aids and not headphones is really important. The technology on the inside is very similar to hearing aid technology, but we’re fundamentally not building a medical product to start with. We’re building a consumer hearing technology product. I think there’s a lot of similarities that can be drawn from the technologies that we use.

Speaker 1: So how many different designs did you go through? I got sort of a quick glimpse there, but… Yeah. It’s cool. It’s very cool. So how you know, how did you come to that being the sort of final design? I’m sure you tested many different things.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, there’s certain limitations that you start with. So we kind of realized if it’s not going to be in the bowl of the ear, like in the concha, or behind the ear, where is it going to be? And if it’s going to be in front of the ear, then how much real estate do you have there to play with? And therefore, what shapes might make the most sense? And I think the more circular shape ended up being something that felt a bit more natural with a lot of the curves around the ear, and not something that felt too yeah. Too, too… I don’t what word I’m looking for is, but like kind of agitating with, standing out in the wrong way.

Speaker 1: Distracting. Distracting.

Speaker 2: Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so we had like a variety of different designs, kind of exploring that and it seemed to feel that circular felt like the more natural shape to go with. We really started out with a lot of foam prototypes, so really just making different foam shapes and using wire to kind of hook it around the ear. And it was a good way to figure out, are we going to be able to get the necessary tech inside this form factor and then really taking this, what is feasible and what is desirable and merging them together to make sure that both of those can exist together.

Speaker 1: Right. No, absolutely. ‘Cause looking good is one thing, right? But obviously we want people to get the benefit wearing them as well. So have you done any testing to see how the sound quality compares with traditional hearing aids? Have you gotten sort of that that right balance yet?

Speaker 2: Yeah. So it was actually just on Sunday this week, I spent six hours … various different people in in one cafe back-to-back

Speaker 1: Wow.

Speaker 2: testing with the latest prototypes that we have and we’ve got working prototypes now. So while a lot of the project up until this point has been focusing on the design and aesthetics, of course, as you just said, it needs to also work and, and solve the problem. How do we take it to the next step? And so we’ve got working electronics inside these now, and while they’re still prototype level electronics, they do work. They enhance the sound. I think at this stage, it would be silly to really compare against the full in-the-market products since they’re just prototypes, but they’re working. And I think the important thing there is that when you change the form factor of something, when you move microphones and speakers, it’s important to understand that, is this new form factor actually going to work? And I think we’ve, we’ve, we’ve checked that off. It’s possible. It works. It does the right thing. Having the microphones in front of the ear rather than behind the ear is only going to be a beneficial thing. As we go forward, we’ll work out if we can really turn that into something that’s exceptional and perhaps even better than some of the premium products on the market.

Speaker 1: That’s great. Are you thinking it would have, you know, sort of bells and whistles like Bluetooth or t-coil or, you know, it’s a, it’s a small space that you’re working with. So how do you balance including some of those things?

Speaker 2: Yes. So I think that you can’t really make an ear-worn product if it’s not going to have Bluetooth in. Rechargeability is absolutely critical as well. There are certain baseline assumptions for anything that you wear on your ears, especially if you’re looking at it from a consumer’s perspective, which, which we are. We’re not approaching this as an alternative to hearing aids or people who are deep within the understanding of what’s available in the hearing aid market. This is really from a perspective of a consumer who has maybe no understanding of hearing aids. What are they going to expect? And Bluetooth and rechargeability absolutely need to be there. T-coil is probably something that is maybe not going to be in the first version. I think many people would agree that it’s a somewhat antiquated technology, and while it’s absolutely still being used by many people it’s also not being used by a whole lot of people as well. And I think new technologies like Auracast are going to be doing a lot more interesting things in the future. So I like the idea of being a bit more forward-thinking with the technology stack rather than holding on to old things which are maybe on their way out.

Speaker 1: Well, and I think people would argue both ways on t-coil for sure. But I think given probably the likely launch date for your product, at that point, hopefully, Auracast would be more common and more readily available. And so it, it makes sense to me that you’d be focused sort of on, on that type of technology with, you know, with fingers crossed that it’ll be usable for people at that point.

Speaker 2: Absolutely.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. So who’s your target customer for this product? Is it… Would you imagine that this would be designed for sort of an over-the-counter type situation where consumers who are purchasing on their own or through a practitioner? How do you think about that?

Speaker 2: So, in the long run, the idea would be that anyone who work to enhance their hearing regardless of their hearing type would be able to benefit from Overtone. I think as you’re entering a market such as the hearing technology market, there are regulatory considerations that need to be taken into account. Therefore approaching this from the more consumer angle in the UK that might look like a, a PSAP, personal sound amplification product. In the US, I believe that doesn’t exist anymore and it’s now different variations of OTC products. This is an easier starting point for any new product to, to enter the market, but this is absolutely not the place that we plan to stay. We’ve got people with a variety of different hearing differences who are reaching out and asking for Overtone to work for them, and that’s absolutely the intention. But there are definitely some hardware challenges that also come with suiting different kinds of hearing, such as using bigger speakers, or maybe even bigger batteries if the product requires more gain and more amplification. So we have to look at what is reasonable to address from day one as a new company with a limited budget. But going forward, we want everyone to be able to, to use these if it works. But I think also maybe another important point here is to not just look at the, the, the downwards side of that scale on, on on increased hearing loss, but also looking at augmenting hearing for, for anyone.

Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2: I think what we’re gonna be seeing in the next few years, especially with the advance of AI, is the ability to do some pretty impressive speech and noise applications with the software. And so, I really think there is an opportunity here going forward for hearing technology and hearing augmentation, or even just acoustics augmentation, thinking less about the individual, but more about the space that they’re in that could be beneficial for everyone. Because whether your hearing is, you know, clinically perfect or otherwise, our hearing is not designed for the world we live in today with the amount of concrete, echoes, traffic, reverberation. All of this is our ears evolutionarily have not caught up with the world we’re in. So being able to augment and optimize the way that you perceive sound in the world through technology is absolutely something we’re looking into going forward.

Speaker 1: I love that concept, because I feel like if everyone is trying to just hear better or communicate better really, then it becomes not stigmatized, right? Part of it is that, you know, if you are wearing hearing aids, or Overtones, or any type of device, this separates you. It means there’s an extra step that you have to go through in order to communicate well. And if everyone’s focused on better acoustics through AI or whatever method then we’re included in that process rather than the only people concerned about that. And so, I think that’s sort of a huge mind shift that’s gonna, we hope, right, take place over the next several years just in the world in general. And who’s gonna benefit the most from that are people with hearing challenges, but we will all benefit from having better communication. So I, I love that concept that you’re talking about.

Speaker 2: There’s a really nice thing that you kind of touched on there where when you design for certain

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: almost everyone can benefit as well. There’s a concept called the, the curb cut effect, which actually was based from curb cuts, these ramps in, in sidewalk pavements. Started in 1960s, I believe, in Berkeley, California where some people in wheelchair campaigned to get these, these cuts taken into the pavement. And this obviously benefited them, and they once, once they campaigned for this and got those put in, it became clear that this didn’t just benefit them, it benefited everyone, whether it was mothers with strollers delivery drivers, cyclists, all these people actually benefited as well. And so I think if you kind, kind of start looking at a lot of design problems as, how can we make life easier for maybe the people who perceive the challenges the most, everyone else is gonna benefit from it as well.

Speaker 1: Yeah. I’ve heard that called like universal design, right? It’s sort of designing where everybody benefits, but of course, the people who need the help are getting it as well. So I love that. I love that. So let’s talk about just the, the flexibility of the design. So is this something where you could change it out? You know, how does the, how does the fashion aspect of it work?

Speaker 2: That’s a great question. So I get asked quite frequently whether or not the design is something that you maybe want to change depending on what you’re wearing or, or something like that. And I have a hunch over how this ought to be, but this is something we’re gonna see going forward. So here’s a couple of examples of how, how that could look. So I’ve got tortoise shell on the right and something more, like, champagne colored on the left. And I think if you think about how the eyewear industry works, most people don’t buy a pair of glasses for every outfit they wear.

Speaker 1: Right.

Speaker 2: They have a pair maybe for work and then one for the evenings. Some do, not every, but most people don’t. And I think what happens when you don’t do that is that the product then becomes a part of who you are. So there are some people who I maybe think of who’ve become kind of defined by the glasses that they wear, at least visually in, in one way or another. There’s a, a famous marketer called Seth Godin and he wears these bright blue glasses. I think he went through a period where he had these yellow ones as well, and they really become a part of him, kind of maybe also as a marketer, someone who does advertising and, and these big displays of, of information and color, it felt very him. But even on the more kind of modest designs, those designs become a part of the person who’s wearing them. And so for that reason, I think there’s maybe more merit to the idea that you would choose a design that feels more in line with your identity, and maybe that is a red pair of Overtones, maybe it is some tortoise shell ones. And I think the benefit that we have here is that the interchangeability of it-… while being maybe more on our side, provides the opportunity for so many different designers to create their own versions of this and reach different people in different markets who have different identities that they want to share and want to show. But whether or not it makes sense for the consumer to make that change on the fly is something that I’m not sure of at this stage, but, you know, never say never. Let’s, let’s see how it goes.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. I was kind of thinking, like, I don’t know, you’re going to the basketball game or a football game and you want to sort of, you know, support your team, would that be something that you could do, or… But it sounds like that’s maybe down the road a bit.

Speaker 2: Maybe.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay. Well, what has the feedback been from your testers at this point?

Speaker 2: So just last week, we did a pop-up in Central London, and this was in the Bloobloom Eyewear store. So Bloobloom is one of the really cool, big designer eyewear brands in the UK. And so think maybe like Warby Parker in the US.

Speaker 1: Oh.

Speaker 2: This is what Bloobloom are like. So they had a store Well, they have a store right next to the Apple Store in Covent Garden. Could not be more central. And the founders very kindly invited me to come down there and bring some non-functioning prototypes that we could share with people who’ve been following Overtone for a while, but also people who were just passing by and in the store having a look around. And this was a really interesting opportunity to learn how people feel and think about Overtone when it’s right in front of them and not just a video on social media. And so we had a bunch of people try them on. And for me, it was very interesting to see how lots of people’s ears were different shapes and different sizes and required a certain level of modularity in their design and ability to, to bend and, and shape each product to fit each individual perfectly. And we’re using materials like acetate and titanium, which can be bent and molded per person. So this was always expected, but it was good to kind of see the different range of, of sizes and shapes with people in the shop. And the feedback was generally really, really good, I think. I was trying to ask people, you know, do we have a color there that you want but, but isn’t here?” And they were like, “No, I just really like these ones or those ones.” But it’s also very interesting to see that there wasn’t any one style or color that was a favorite. I we had five or six on show, and all of them were favorites to someone. And I think that’s what I really liked about it, that there isn’t a single design that works for everyone. There is the range and there’s the opportunity to choose one, and I think that’s really what makes it special. So feedback has been really fantastic at this stage. With the working prototypes, feedback was good, but we had a single audio preset for four people with wildly different hearing profiles all of which where everyone seemed to be kind of positively surprised by. One person even said, “If I could leave with these prototypes right now, I would continue wearing them as is without any other changes,” which was, even to me, kind of, like, incredible. So I think we’re going in the right direction. Definitely there’s a lot of work still to be done taking it from working prototype to market-ready product, but I think we’re definitely going in the right direction.

Speaker 1: Awesome. So what’s next for Overtone and sort of what’s your, your ideal timeline? Or maybe that’s an fair question, right? ‘Cause you’d never know how long all the iterations will take. But, you know, what’s sort of your plan going forward?

Speaker 2: So I think up until this point, we’ve done a lot of risk mitigation. I think you and I met a long time ago, and this was back

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Overtone was really trying to find its feet in, what even is this product? What is the idea behind it? And over the last years, I think I’ve worked out the ideal shape, form factor, got electronics inside it, understanding that they all work together, but also developing the narrative and the story behind Overtone that makes the most sense. Developing a distribution model that I think through the eyewear industry is incredibly interesting, that it’s maybe not gonna be how people would expect hearing technology to be found, but is equally surprising and makes sense. Interestingly, in the European markets, eyewear and earwear kind of makes a lot more

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: than in the US at the moment. But that’s absolutely something that I think will be a welcome change going forward. So a lot of what I’ve been doing up to now is just working out what’s the right way for this to, to be positioned. Now we’re at a point where we’re ready to start building. So we’ve got a manufacturer who we’re working with to build the technology and we’re almost ready to go, ready to begin building. So I’m gonna be opening our, like pre-seed round investment in the very near future, and this is gonna fund the production of the first 1,000 units that we can sell, get in people’s ears, and, and learn how they actually… how they’re working. So like you said, it’s very hard to put definite timelines on these things, but let’s hope in the next 12 to 18 months, we will have a product on the market.

Speaker 1: Fabulous. Well, it’s very exciting to me. I have been watching your progress with eager interest, as I’m sure many people have. So I wish you continued luck as you continue the innovation process and the testing process. And so if people want to learn more about Overtone, where should they go to learn about it?

Speaker 2: Yeah. So you can find us on the website, so overtone.so, or on LinkedIn. You can follow me, Nick Morgan-Jones Instagram overtone.so, and TikTok overtone.so. And I post all of the updates on there. There’s a wait list on the website and a newsletter that you can join as well.

Speaker 1: Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Nick. It’s been great to hear from you and, and hear these updates. Wish you lots of luck.

Speaker 2: Thanks so much for having me.