Overview:
The Goal: The Ideal Aural Environment
Many different types of headphones are offered today with various purposes and sizes. The iphone headphones, for example, allow the user to stop their music and take a phone call. When a call comes in, the user hears it through their headphones. To accept the call, they push the button on the rectangular device, and the music gets paused, allowing for a phone call to take place. Push-to-hear modules run by AAA batteries are also on the market.
Proposed Solution:
Our team has devised headphones that have small microphones outside of the earbuds with different settings depending on the user's goals. In the ambient or safe running mode, sound from the outside environment would be mixed in with the user's music. In the running mode, the music volume would adjust to the volume of the external environment. In conversation mode, the volume of the user's music would be decreased or completely cut off when an outside voice is detected.