Hasta La Ideas

Reading consumer product reviews of headphones on Amazon or Apple’s site is depressing, and rather like reading the Reader Comments section of a Daily News article: People seem to have no concept or tolerance of those who are different from themselves. You see things like “One star. These earbuds fit terrible” right beneath “Previous poster is an idiot, these headphones fit GREAT!”

It’s the 50th anniversary of electronics manufacturer Plantronics, and Slashgear’s taken a look inside their industrial design labs. Ever wonder how Plantronics gets around the everyone’s-got-different-shaped-ears thing? The answer is simple and kinda gross: They have a wall of simulated human ears, presumably cast from actual ears.

This wall contains rubber molds of ears of every size, shape and form they could possibly throw together in order to cover as wide a range of ear shapes possible. Plantronics tests all new headset designs rigorously in order to put on the market the most comfortable headset for all shape and sized ears. Ears are notoriously difficult to create a mass market product for due to the level of inconsistency in human ear shapes. This wall is the “database” Plantronics has created in order to hit as many variables in headset design possible.

Tune in next week while we dig up a photo of Bausch & Lomb’s wall of eyeballs.

(more…)