Cone is the first music player using AI to create personalized musical journeys based on taste, mood, habits, and the world around you. It uses advanced AI to curate the perfect song for the moment and if you happen to disagree, spin the dial for the next track or genre or simply ask it to play the song you want.

Together with the Aether team, we went on a highly ambitious and disruptive path to create 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 democratize and bring music back into people’s lives with contextual relevance and personalized inspiration, all embodied in a simple and non-technical product.

Through a deeply collaborative process with the exceptional Aether team, we distilled the user insights into simple user experience drivers as the foundation for creative exploration. We really wanted to design an experience that catered to all moods and modes of listening to music throughout a given day. Even if this meant designing both simple physical interactions for personal curation as well as an entire voice command experience, long before Alexa. These ambitious interactions then seamlessly blended into the design to create a purposeful, beautiful, de-technified product for the contemporary home.

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 overlaid with context to curate the music even better over time.

The result is the first ever voice controlled & AI-driven music player, making music inspiring, social, and personal again. The Cone balances contemporary interior design with simple analog interactions and advanced technology so you can just relax, enjoy your favorite music and let Cone do the work for you. Cone was the first product in an extensive range of larger, smaller, and more wearable products all built on the idea of simple controls for advanced contextual AI curated content.

Over the years, our collaboration grew with the expanding portfolio of speakers and wearables. Consequently, broadening our engagement and expertise to include most aspects of the development phases.