"It's more than you think of us... Thirty-Seven Million People Are Not a Niche"

Nearly 37.5 million American adults suffer from hearing impairments. More than three-quarters of them could be aided with a hearing device. You got your design brief right there.

Here's the number that keeps bugging me:

According to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, in the US, there are 37.5 million adults experiencing hearing difficulty. That makes one out of seven Americans. Out of these 37.5 million, 28.8 million would benefit from hearing aids. To put it differently, this means nearly 77 percent.

So, three out of four people suffering from hearing impairment clinically qualify for a hearing aid. Yet very few of them actually own it. I explored this gap in the market between these two numbers in a previous post called [Only One in Four Wears One](/blog/only-one-in-four-wears-one). Today, it's the opposite story. However, and the gap is not insignificant because the target market is not an insignificant one too.

The market is huge.

This should put your mind on a completely different track already. Think about it. You're not working with a specialized medical device for a tiny segment of the population. You're designing a consumer good that potentially could reach the scale of reading glasses