The reason no one wants to be seen wearing hearing aids is probably that they don't work well, or at least they didn't. When the problems with such hearing aids are solved, a new/old problem arises: Background noises are often blamed on the hearing aid. The problem is that the user has lost ABONSO (automatic brain-operated noise suppressor option), and the problem persists until the user relearns how to recognize and localize background noises (at which time the brain automatically performs as a highly effective noise suppressor option). Ongoing attempts to replace the brain with a tiny circuit that will somehow reject noises we don't want to hear are unlikely to result in useful devices.
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Mead C. Killion (1993) studied this question.
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