Surface Earbuds
Designing Products From The Human Out
Most earbuds don’t fit or stay in peoples’ ears. Or they stay in one ear but not the other. Why? Well, it turns out that every person’s ear is almost as unique as their finger print! We learned this the hard way designing the in-ear fit system for Microsofts’ Surface Earbuds. But that lesson in complex ergonomic design also gave us the opportunity to create a differentiated product. One that not only fit more ears more comfortably than any other product on the market to date, but also felt natural in the ear which allowed users to wear them comfortably for longer periods of time. So natural feeling, in fact, that we received lots of anecdotal reports from users who forgot the earbuds were even in their ears, and some who accidentally slept with them in!
Precise Human Factors
Achieving this level of fit and comfort was a product of the careful interplay between form and material design driven by our teams’ precise human factors measures and specifications, including inner ear morphology and tissue characteristics.
Along the way, we established a new way of making product prototypes that are centered around the human body, rather than the technology. Traditionally, tech prototypes are defined loosely around the technology in them and the materials used to fabricate them, which are not realistic form a usability or wearability perspective. This makes it difficult to make informed business and engineering decisions about the end-user experience. They look real but don’t feel real. Our new process made it possible to do more timely and realistic user evaluations while also reducing time and material costs.