HearWise

HearWise: Smarter listening, healthier ears, better focus.

Comment

Social Impact Statement: HearWise helps users maintain focus, productivity, and mental clarity by encouraging healthier listening habits and timely audio breaks.

Problem Statement

Headphones have become an essential part of modern work, learning, and entertainment. Students often wear headphones during study sessions, online classes, and collaborative projects, while professionals rely on them for meetings, focused work, music, and podcasts. As listening time continues to increase, many people are unaware of how prolonged headphone use can contribute to auditory fatigue, reduced concentration, and long-term hearing-health risks.

While digital wellness tools commonly focus on fitness, sleep, and productivity, hearing wellness remains largely overlooked. There are few tools that help users understand their listening habits, recognize potentially unhealthy patterns, and take proactive steps to protect their hearing before problems arise.

Solution Overview

HearWise is a gamified hearing wellness platform that helps users develop healthier listening habits through personalized insights, real-time feedback, and engaging wellness challenges. By analyzing listening behavior, volume levels, and music activity patterns, the platform identifies habits that may contribute to hearing fatigue, reduced concentration, and long-term hearing risks.

When unsafe listening levels are detected, HearWise provides immediate notifications encouraging users to lower their volume. The platform also calculates hearing wellness metrics based on their Spotify listening data and presents them through an easy-to-understand dashboard. Users can improve their hearing wellness score by completing personalized challenges, taking guided listening breaks, and following actionable recommendations tailored to their habits. The app includes Safe Listening Sessions, where users complete a short survey about their listening preferences and habits. Using machine learning, HearWise analyzes survey responses alongside listening activity to identify listening patterns and preferences, then recommends personalized listening durations and ear-break intervals designed to promote healthier listening habits and reduce auditory fatigue.

As an alternative, users can integrate their calendar for the app to schedule personalized ear-rest reminders during planned listening sessions. HearWise identifies designated listening periods and recommends timely ear breaks, helping users maintain healthier listening habits throughout the day.

Powered by machine learning, hearing-health research, and AI-driven wellness agents, HearWise delivers personalized risk assessments, smart break reminders, and wellness guidance that promote safer listening behaviors. By combining data-driven insights with gamification, the platform encourages long-term habit formation while supporting hearing health, productivity, and sustained focus.

Key Features

  • Spotify authentication and listening-data analysis
  • Personalized hearing-health insights and wellness recommendations
  • AI-powered ear-break guidance and smart break reminders
  • Machine learning analysis of listening behavior and engagement patterns
  • Hearing Wellness Score and Hearing Age tracking
  • Achievement milestones and listening streaks
  • Progress tracking and long-term wellness monitoring
  • Slack-based meeting detection for workplace listening awareness
  • Interactive dashboard with personalized wellness metrics

Technologies Used

HearWise is built as a full-stack web application using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Node.js, and Express. Secure Spotify authentication, the Spotify Web API, and Slack integration enable HearWise to analyze listening activity, monitor usage patterns, and deliver wellness notifications within users' daily workflows.

Machine learning models analyze listening behaviors, survey responses, and listening trends to generate personalized break recommendations, safe listening sessions, and ear-rest schedules. AI-powered agents provide hearing-wellness insights and actionable recommendations tailored to each user. The interactive dashboard visualizes Hearing Age estimates, ear health scores, progress tracking, achievements, and wellness metrics, helping users better understand and improve their listening habits.

Target Users

HearWise is designed for students, professionals, remote workers, and anyone who regularly uses headphones throughout the day. It is especially beneficial for individuals who spend long hours listening to music, attending virtual meetings, studying, working, or consuming audio content.

By helping users understand their listening habits and encouraging healthier behaviors, HearWise supports improved focus, productivity, cognitive well-being, and long-term hearing health.

Challenges encountered

One of the challenges was transforming raw listening activity into meaningful wellness insights. Integrating Spotify data with machine learning systems and generating personalized recommendations required significant refinement and accurate data analysis. Another challenge involved translating hearing-health research into actionable guidance that users could easily understand and apply. Ensuring an intuitive user experience and delivering relevant recommendations using wellness metrics was also a a key focus throughout development.

What's next for HearWise

The vision is to expand HearWise to not only Spotify but also support additional platforms such as Apple Music, YouTube, and Zoom. This will focus on enhancing machine learning models with more hearing-health research and personalized risk assessments. The goal is to make hearing wellness as common, proactive, and accessible as fitness tracking.

Built With

Share this project:

Updates