Ēkyu | Devpost

Title
Earplug and Companion App
Physical Product
Touch Functionality

Inspiration

We were inspired by the concept of semantic hearing: the capability for hearable devices that can focus on, or ignore, specific sounds. Noise pollution stems from chaos; why listen to unending car honks, incessant jackhammering, barking dogs, when you can listen to running water, the leaves rustling, and the laughter from your friends? Focusing on what makes life beautiful brought clarity to the chaos of the world, which is exactly what we wanted to accomplish with Ēkyu.

What it does

Select the sound you want to hear, and tune out the rest. In a world of chaos, Ēkyu centralizes your listening experience by filtering out disorder with 5 different listening modes. Environment: Lower the talk to hear what's around you. Ēkyu focuses on natural sounds so you can stop and smell the roses without distraction.
Conversation: Turn down the crowds and turn up the person. Ēkyu isolates your personal conversations so you will never need to ask “Can you repeat that?”.
Focus: Make the whole world silent. Ēkyu blocks all external noise, so you can focus on what is truly important. Concert: Tune out the screams to hear what you actually paid for. Ēkyu dials in on the performance on the stage instead of the performances around you. Custom: Individualize your listening experience based on your personal preferences. Want to listen to nature sounds, but still focus on conversation? Minimize or maximize specific sounds to your liking.

Interact with Ēkyu both physically and digitally. Gestures:

Swipe horizontally to change listening modes.
Swipe vertically to adjust volume.
Press and hold to turn off temporarily.
Vibrations appear for warning noises that have been blocked out.

Companion App:

Controller to switch between modes, pair devices, and adjust settings.

How we built it

We utilized Figma for all design work, Notability to map out the timeline and plan of our project, and Google Gemini to assist with our ideation and research phases.

Challenges we ran into

After initially hearing the prompt, the team got to work, ideating on different problems we would like to solve and how we would approach them. As we generated more ideas, we became lost. We wanted to incorporate a mix of software and hardware, and began to explore AR and VR in healthcare and criminology. It wasn’t until we began to discuss the quietness of polar nights in the Arctic that we started thinking about semantic hearing. Once we started to explore creating a device that allows individuals to tune out certain aspects of their surroundings, the ideas flowed.

During the design process, one of the hardest parts was creating custom icons for the different modes of Ēkyu. We wanted to create icons that look fluid and modern to match the branding of our product. However, this often led to symbols that weren’t perceived correctly. After interviewing individuals on icon ideas and discussing within our team, we were finally able to decide on 5 that best represent the modes: environment, conversation, focus, concert, and custom.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The breadth and scope of this project, while tight in functionality, large in implementation.

What's next for Ēkyu

We would love to further develop the functionalities that assist individuals with hearing impairments. After interviewing an individual who faces hearing impairment, we discovered that one of their main struggles is being able to focus on one conversation in a crowded environment. Though our product currently functions to help solve this problem, we would like to conduct further research to expand our custom mode to better isolate and prioritize specific voices in real time, allowing users to filter out background noise with greater precision and adapt seamlessly to a variety of acoustic environments. This could include features such as speaker identification, directional audio focusing, and personalized sound profiles that learn and adjust to each user's unique hearing needs and preferences over time.