While eyeglass frames are designed by designers, the classic hearing aid—that flesh-colored aural suppository—seems to have been designed by—well, not a designer. And with the stigma surrounding the often-bulky old-school variety of devices, many people who need everyday assistance to hear, end up going without. Hearing aid developer Starkey Laboratories recognized this void in the market and looked to the folks at product innovation consultancy firm Karten Design to create an exterior for its hearing aid technology that would not only be functional, but also “beautiful in the hand and invisible behind the ear.”

Knowing that the typical flesh-toned hearing aids don’t often blend with a wearer’s skin—to put it mildly—the designers used Luxion KeyShot rendering software to perform a digital color study to find a finish that doesn’t match skin tone, but instead acts as a camouflage. Eric Olson, director of design at Karten explains: “We did a thorough study into what colors and what types of finishes blend the best with hair and skin. We narrowed the options down to several multi-tone metallic finishes, which would pick up the naturally occurring highlights in the hair and complement skin tone.”

Finding the perfect finish wasn’t the only challenge for the designers; the form of the device also had to be spot-on. Olson stresses that just because the hearing aid is less than an inch high, the design process wasn’t any simpler. In fact, the designers relied on an automotive-style rendering process when constructing the device’s finish palette, its sculpted profile, and to evaluate the manufacturing feasibility of its small details prior to engineering. The process resulted in a stylish design with complex surfacing that could easily be mistaken for a trendy wireless communication gadget.

In addition to the smooth and sleek surface, the curved spine of the hearing aid features capacitive controls which, like a touch screen on a smart phone, only require the swipe of a finger to adjust the volume – faster and easier than messing with tiny buttons and small dials.