Aether - Cone
Music made simple
Cone is the first music player to create personalised musical journeys based on your taste, mood, habits and world around you. It uses advanced AI to calculate the perfect song for the moment and if you happen to disagree spin the dial for next track or genre or simply ask it to play the song you want. Beautifully simple and simply beautiful.
Challenge
The Aether team took us onboard early on a highly ambitious and disruptive path of creating a music experience that was as advanced in technology as it was simple to use. The mission was to build a range of products that all broke new ground in contextual learning while also pushing the boundaries of how modern technology should work, look and feel. The core challenge was understanding how to bring music back into people’s lives by contextual relevance and personalised inspiration , all embodied in a simple and non-technical product
Approach
Through a deep collaborative process we and the exceptional Aether team distilled the user insights into simple user experience drivers as the foundation for the creative exploration. We really wanted to design an experience catering to all your moods and modes of listening to music throughout your day. Even if this meant designing both simple physical interactions for personal curation as well as an entire voice command experience, long before e.g. Alexa. These ambitious interactions should then seamlessly blend into the design to create a purposeful, beautiful , de-technified product for your contemporary home.
Result
The result is the first ever voice controlled & AI driven music player, making music inspiring, social and personal again. The Cone balance contemporary interior design with simple analog interactions and advanced technology so you can just relax, enjoy your favourite music and let Cone do the job for you.
Cone was the first product in a extensive range of larger, smaller and more wearable products all built on the idea of simple controls for advanced contextual AI curated content.
“The Aether Cone is magically simple”
User experience drivers
Derived from the ethnographic studies and user research we distilled the key parameters for both the brand, the products and the signature user experience.
Just the right song for the moment
Simply spin the front dial for the next song or if you feel like a different genre or even type of content, then just give it a big spin and the journey starts over. Oh, and everything you do will be overlay with context to curate the music even better over time.
“Cone is one of the most beautiful pieces of technology to come across my desk in years.”
About Aether
Aether was a San Francisco based start-up company funded by Janus Friis, co-founder of Skype and Rdio.
Founded in 2011 by talent from Nokia, Apple, Google, Logitech etc. Aether rose quickly to great potential, size and ambition and launched it's first product Cone in 2014 followed by years of further portfolio expansions before closing down late 2015.
Aether mission was to develop thinking devices that integrate hardware, software, and services into intuitive user experiences.
Capabilities
- Head of Industrial Design
- Design Strategy
- User Experience Design
- CMF
Capabilities beyond Aether Cone
- Portfolio roadmap
- Design Strategy
- Industrial Design
- UX
- Mechanical Engineering
- Electronics
- Software
- Supply Chain
Recognition
