Plantronics builds creepy Wall of Ears

Company describes how troublesome they are to design for

Embed

15 March 2010 15:33 GMT / By Duncan Geere

Back at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Plantronics revealed a whole pile of headsets of various sorts - Bluetooth, multimedia, voice. But to make all that stuff, the company has to have a good idea of the human ear, and how it changes between different people.

So as part of its research process, the company's industrial design department takes moulds of human ears to try and find out how they differ, and what the average ear is like. What does it do with those moulds when they're made? It puts them on a massively creepy wall of ears. Those ears are sorted into how representative they are of the population and then used by the engineers to test new products.

Plantronics' Wall of Ears can be found at its headquarters in Santa Cruz, California. The company says: "if you're ever in Santa Cruz and fancy having your ear mould made, Plantronics would be more than happy to include yours on the Wall!". Somehow we doubt we'll be taking them up on the offer - how about you?

Full tags

Audio, Plantronics, Bluetooth, Headsets, Ears, Video