The insider story behind the Beosound Shape: What it takes to make a ground breaking product
In April 2017 Bang & Olufsen announced the Beosound Shape (press release). A product challenging the industry status quo. This is the inside story of what it takes to make a truly unique product, the challenges and the collaboration efforts behind it, with an inspiration that started more than 5 years earlier. Surely the most complex product I have ever worked on…
Bang & Olufsen loves “challenging the industry” and the status quo… We have always been doing that… In the 70s when HiFi products were all about knobs and dials, Bang & Olufsen released the BeoMaster 1900, which elevated only the essential daily UI, while it hid away the non-essentials.
In the 90s, while the CD-changers where black boxes that you would put in all your CDs in a tray and switch among them “blindly”, the Beosound 9000 took another way. It actually made your CDs clearly visible, like a poster on your wall, visually showing your guests the music you like.
The Beosound Shape came in 2017 to challenge what a speaker system is in a modern home. The Beosound Shape is not just about bringing a beautiful product into the home. It is not just about making it blend in. It is about hiding in plain sight and making it a natural building block of your interior. It is a product recognized by all kinds of non-tech press:
- Forbes: “Bang & Olufsen made a luxury ‘wall of sound’ fit for hipster living”
- Deezen: “Bang & Olufsen’s modular BeoSound Shape speakers are arranged like wall tiles”
- Wired: “These Speakers Create a Beautiful Wall of Sound”
- Design Milk: “The BeoSound Shape is a Modular Audio System Designed to Color Walls With Sound”
- Wallpaper*: “Creative talents explore the possibilities of Bang & Olufsen’s BeoSound Shape system”
What is the story behind this product and what it took to develop it? Let me give you the story as experienced from the inside…
The early concept days
The story starts about 5 years earlier, in early 2012. Jørgen Daucke (Concept Manager at B&O at the time) was talking to Bang & Olufsen stores and installers about installing — at the time — Beolab 5 speakers in people’s dreams homes and realizing the acoustic challenges in a modern home with a lot of hard surfaces echoing the sound from everywhere. That experience and discussion gave the initial idea of combining speakers with acoustical dampening material and make an all-in-one decorative installation that took care of both. When playing around with the idea and discussing the concept with the acoustics department, Jørgen Daucke realized we had a unique opportunity to “put a band on the wall” freeing the user of the normal stereo sweet spot setup where only one listener in principle gets the perfect audio … if the listener sits still in the perfect spot. All of this was discussed with the designer Øivind Slaatto at the time as they both, Jørgen and Øivind, were working together on the Beoplay A9 (that is to be publicly announced in October 2012), which is Øivind’s first product for Bang & Olufsen.
Ideas are exchanged, technologies are discussed and concepts considered around sound as a building block, personal sound zones(link & link), etc. To deliver those advanced experiences walls need to be covered with speakers, what does this mean?
Around mid-2012 Øivind Slaatto moves into a new design studio. While preparing the space for the move, he observes how the open space and the flat surfaces make the acoustics very bad for a working environment. He starts thinking how to improve the acoustics of such a space. How to maybe add beautiful sound yet improve the acoustics of the room at the same time… You can read more about this part of the story here.
He works with the idea and comes with a concrete concept to Bang & Olufsen, pitching the idea of the “Honeycomb” in February 2013. The very unique element is that Øivind actually never received any brief from Bang & Olufsen for coming with this concept, which is the usual way of working with a designer. Here are some of those initial pitch slides:
Marie-Kristine Schmidt, Head of Concept & Design at B&O at the time, first saw this concept at Øivind’s studio when they met for a coffee talk and Øivind showed her his new studio. There he presented quite a few concepts. The “Honeycomb” idea just blew her away. They agreed this was something they should explore together — Bang & Olufsen and Øivind Slaatto — but she knew that we had to time this as we needed maturity in the roadmap / portfolio / organization and maturity in the market to be able to successfully launch this product.
“With Beosound Shape, Bang & Olufsen transforms from being a manufacturer of speakers to a company that makes auditive indoor climate. In stead of “only” making sound, where now also make room for silence. Both are equally important for well-being and the key elements in both music and any language”, Øivind Alexander Slaatto
The early prototype
Over the course of approximately one year Marie is pitching the concept to Bang & Olufsen’s top management, colleagues and team members, to mature their mindset to be able to get this established as a business project.
Many people believe in the concept, so there is some background exploration work going on… A wooden mockup is created, to see how it would look visually at scale…
Also an acoustical mock-up is created, but on something that looks nothing like the actual design…
At some point, it is decided to create the first functional prototype. The internal components of the Beolab 17 speakers are used, to create a one-off prototype. A very specific “fixed” design, with a very specific placement. Jakob Dyreby, Specialist in Electro Acoustics, is manually creating the acoustical concept for this one-off prototype.
Actually that very first one-off prototype, that was “hand crafted”, and manually tuned was later transferred to one of our very special customers, at the Aston Martin dealership in St. Gallen, Switzerland, before it was actually a product or fully developed. We used the opportunity as a learning case. You can read the related story here. Actually those learnings and insights contributed later (in 2015) towards the decision to “kick-off” the project and move it from “exploration” to “business” project.
It is being demoed to a lot of people, but running as a lower priority at the time, there is no proper project kick-off. Nothing happens for quite some time. The project comes up in a “scoping session” (in 2014) where we are looking at all the opportunities in the pipeline, deciding which ones to put on the roadmap. But still the concept has low traction and it is not chosen to be part of the future roadmap.
In May 2015, Lisbet Jantzen, Head of Insights at the time, is executing a research project called “Future Living”, in New York City, with other B&O team members. It is there where it was identified that Millennials are placing high value on things they create, one of the key insights showing potential with the “Honeycomb” to set and lead a trend. Those insights, combined with the learnings from the St. Gallen early installation, gave the “ticket”, during the 2015 scoping session, to the “Honeycomb” to enter the roadmap.
The business project
In the end of 2015, the company decided to kick-off a business project on what is now called “Project SoundWall”. Business project means that we are going to work on it beyond just an exploration, treat it as a project that will potentially deliver a product with business impact.
“Beoplay A9 represented a new strategic move for B&O in the high quality audio category. Before A9 we delivered high quality audio through a classic static stereo speaker setup. With A9 we created a flexible solution for high end audio delivered through one portable and amazing speaker, that could move with you throughout the home. SoundWall represented another strategic move where we managed to deliver a customizable and integrated speaker setup — turning sound into an integrated part of the living space matching peoples preferences both in terms of look, size, sound etc. and delivering additional benefits with the qualities of a improved acoustic environment. This is for me the real deal. Understanding the strategic shifts we made moving B&O forward — and the opportunities and importance this had for the company.”, Marie-Kristine Schmidt
The initial assumption is that this is a product for Enterprise/B2B use, thus my expert Product Management colleague in this domain, Brian Bjørn Hansen, takes the lead. In his initial business case calculations it is clear that the return on the investment will be low, if we focus only on the Enterprise segment… We could turn it into a product for homes, but there are many challenges to solve, before it can become a consumer proposition.
So, this is where I (Petros Belimpasakis) come in, around March 2016, taking over from Brian as the Product Manager and Business Lead, to run the project with high focus also on end consumers, both from the offering point of view (installation, configuration, etc) and from the go-to-market point of view. Damion Bailey is selected to be the Concept Lead, Bertel Brodersen the Technical Lead and Karsten Langhoff Sørensen the System Architect. That would constitute what we call the “Core Team”. A well balanced team representing business, concept and technology. The “tough triangle” you need to balance (not necessarily balance equally though), to create a successful product. That is the team that will work together on a daily basis to bring the product to the market and around that team all other functions with hundreds of people contributing, such as: acoustics, hardware, software, mechanics, service, training, marketing, PR, operations, procurement, manufacturing, partners, suppliers, etc. They would all interface with the project via this core team of 4 key people.
The Challenges
The concept of the Beosound Shape might appear simple at first sight: “speakers that you put next to each other, like Lego bricks”. What can be so hard to make? It is not simple at all however. The main reason is that those hexagon “tiles” as we call them are not all just the same speakers. Some are speakers, some are amplifiers and some acoustic dampening material. The latter to deliver to the original concept from Øivind Slaatto, that the product should also improve the acoustics of your room passively when it does not play music.
The reason for splitting the components this way was because we wanted to use the maximum physical volume of the speakers. One amplifier can “drive” up to 4 speakers. If we had in each tile combined the speaker and the amplifier, the physical volume left to the speaker would be much less. Meaning that either the performance per tile would be less, or that each tile would need to be bigger/deeper. We did not want to compromise on either. This decision came with many challenges.
- Thermal handling
Every product, especially a speaker with an amplifier is heavily tested with regards its thermal properties. The louder you play, the higher the temperature raises over time. This applies also to any electronic device (e.g. your smartphone getting hot after long usage, etc). All products are extensively tested on how they heat up with usage and how they dispense the heat, to not burn the user or destroy their electronics. The challenge with the Beosound Shape was that you did not know the final product, until it was in the user’s wall.
With the Beosound Shape there is no “final” complete product to test before hand. Each product is unique, as its user designs it. So the thermal footprint is different if there is only one amplifier on the edge of the product, but different if the amplifier is surrounded by other tiles, such as speakers/dampeners, as that makes it more difficult for the amplifier to cool. It is even worse if two amplifiers are next to each other… Heat was a big issue during a long part of the product development. The solution in the end came with a mechanical adaptation.
While in the original concept the tiles were “closed” with only air flow from the back (see image below, on the left), the final concept actually was a tile slightly bigger/deeper with multiple ventilation holes (see the image below, on the right). Every single tile (no matter if amplifier, speaker or damper) needed to have that new design. Because the principal was to create a “chimney” affect. Cold air from the bottom of the product would flow throw all tiles, getting released at the top.
This adaptation would allow the product to properly cool, no matter how large it is. However, this was not enough. We needed to ensure that the amplifiers would be the first ones to get the “cooler” air. Thus, the online configuration tool, that would later create the installation instructions for each individual Beosound Shape, would also have to take this into consideration and propose the exact placement of each component, within the user’s preferred design. Amplifiers would always be placed at the bottom, to ensure they are the first ones to get the coolest air.
Looking at the photo above, you would also wonder why the tiles were originally white but they ended up being black. Every detail matters. The original white concept was of course meant to match the majority of the walls out there, that are white or light color. However, opening those ventilation holes in all the tiles, created a very sharp visual contrast between the white body and the black holes. So much that it was very disturbing. Thus, the decision was made to simply switch the body color to black to reduce the visual noise.
Solving the thermal issue was one of the biggest challenges, that required very tight collaboration between the teams in acoustics, electronics, mechanics and design. In the example above you see the interconnected chain configuration of those elements. A choice in the acoustics (about using the full performance of the speakers), creates issues at the thermal side, which in turn requires adaptations in the mechanics side, which in turn ends up effecting the color choice of the product body, the design and the configuration tool… Solving this issue in the best way would not be possible, without the tight collaboration of those teams.
2. Mounting
As we had decided, due to the business case, to make the product more focused on end consumers (and not exclusive to enterprise), we had to ensure ease of installation by professional and non-professionals alike. This decision had fundamental effects in the design of the end-to-end customer experience, starting with mounting on the wall. Issues we had to address:
- How to you install the tiles on the wall so perfectly, that there are no gaps or miss-alignments between them? Drilling on the walls 10 or more screws with such perfection is impossible.
- How do you ensure the product looks perfect even if the walls are not perfectly flat?
- How can you make the product install-able by just 1 person, if needed, no matter how large the product is?
- If you decide to modify or extend the design, how do you easily do that?
These and other installation & mechanical challenges were solved by an ingenious solution that Birgitte Mogensen, Mechanical Lead in our Struer Innovation Center, came up with. We called it the “star rail system”.
The idea was that behind the tiles there is a system of plastic “stars”, that click to each other with some connectors of specific length (seen on the right side of the image). So the installation is actually creating the shape of the product with that structure. And the tiles “click”/lock on top of the star rail system. As the connectors between the star rail system are all of exact the same length, the spaces between the tiles are exact. The installer drills on the wall to install this light structure at first. Then all the tiles magically fall in place, with great accuracy. Moreover, the system is designed so cleverly that you can start putting the first 3 pieces on the wall, and from there slowly growing it tile by tile. Making the installation possible with one person no matter the size.
3. Connectivity Between the Tiles
So once everything is installed on the wall, the different components need to be electronically connected together. Amplifiers, speakers, audio signal, AC power, etc. Here came the next challenge: All speakers needed of course to play in perfect sync. In a product with extreme modularity. One could by default wire them with an analogue cable, and “daisy chain” the amplifiers in an analogue manner. But the more amplifiers one would add, the more the static electricity and “noise” would increase. Remember, since this is a consumer product, normal power outlet is expected. An AC power outlet with grounding should not be assumed available. At the same time, we did not know the exact number of amplifiers that are to be used in each setup. That was up to the user based on the size of the product he/she desired. A few months into development it was clear that the analogue sound was not an option and we needed to switch to a digital interface between the amplifiers, to daisy chain them, to avoid any noise and static electricity. But we had never used such a solution before, it is not common in the consumer electronics. There had not been such a thing as “scalable speakers” in a single product, as we envisioned it.
We had to look for inspiration in the automotive industry and ended up using a digital technology called A2B. It is used in cars because the final configuration in the car’s accessories varies highly depending on the customer configuration. And this was exactly the case we had in our hands, but in another domain. As we had never used this technology before, there was a lot of hard work between us and our development partners, over multiple workshops and telcos to make it all work seamlessly.
“Beosound Shape is one of those everlasting products that you will tell your grandsons about with pride. The first expandable and customizable consumer speaker ever made. A concept that seem so simple in function yet so challenging to develop, forcing the team to use new technologies and really explore inventive ways of creating the best solutions. Despite ambitious plans and a multitude of continuous challenges throughout, the development team was able to push limits and deliver the product in time and quality. It was a major achievement with lots of learning for all involved including us in the core team”, Karsten Langhoff Sørensen
4. Manufacturing & Packaging
When we look at where to manufacture and assemble the product many variables come into the picture. Beosound Shape was making use of materials that we are very familiar with (plastic housing, fabric, etc) and did not require very high craftsmanship expertise, like aluminum or wood would require. At the same time we would require a high volume of tiles to be created, which meant a more mass production process. An average-sized Beosound Shape would have 12–20 tiles.
With those kind of requirements the choice was obvious that we needed to produce the product in China.
This is also the time my colleague Choon Kee Soh (aka CK) from our B&O Singapore development office takes over as the Technical Lead. His close proximity to our partners in Asia would help the collaboration and speed of execution.
Packaging and shipping was another challenge. We needed to make sure we had the most reliable packaging, with the most material re-use, and highest customer flexibility on customization
5. Fabrics
Wanting to, of course, give customers choice with a wide range of tile colors, to match their home interiors, we also wanted to make sure we had a premium textile offering. Apart from our “standard” fabrics we had previously used fabrics from Kvadrat, the well renowned Danish company. Actually located only 2 hours drive away from our HQ in Struer.
The assumption in the beginning of the product developmnet was that we would be reusing the same type of Kvadrat fabric we had used before, for example for the Beoplay A9 and Beoplay A6. This fabric had already passed all our extensive testing requirements, with regards to durability, acoustic transparency, etc. and we had an established supply chain in place.
However, once we started testing of this specific fabric on the hexagon tiles of the Beosound Shape (at that time the “Project Soundwall”), it was clear we had a major issue. The specific fabrics were woven in such a way that had a great balance of acoustic transparency and fabric density, but only when used on smooth curved surfaces (again, like the Beoplay A9 and Beoplay A6 had). Once they were placed on the tiles of the Beosound Shape, the sharp edges (both on the middle of each tile, and at the periphery of each tile), would “stretch” the fabric to an extent that the yarns stretched apart and were no longer uniform.
I had some experience working with fabric before, but not enough to recognize how big an issue that could end up being, as a new fabric would need to go through extensive testing (heat, humidity, light exposure, etc.) and should be woven in such a way to pass our acoustic requirements (i.e. not block the sound). I only realized the importance when receiving a call from Marie-Kristine Schmidt, in Sept 2016, urging me to prioritize this issue, because this process could end up taking many months. And she was right, looking backwards, the complexity and issues to be addressed where many to deliver to the quality both brands were after. Fortunately, myself and Damion picked up the urgency call and we were in Kvadrat’s HQ, within a week, to put a plan in place on how to develop new fabrics.
Actually, after successful execution of the project, Kvadrat ended up installing one of the largest Beosound Shape (65 tiles) in the London, UK flagship store.
Go to market
Early on we knew that this is a pretty special product that required a unique go-to-market approach. It was September 2016 that we firmly decided we wanted to announce the product in Salone Del Mobile, in Milan (i.e The Milan Furniture Fair), which would take place on 4th April 2017. That was 7 months down the road, and that time we of course did not have an actual working product on hand beyond this:
The Milan target was very clear for us. This is a product that needs to reach the target audience and that would not happen via the tech venues such as IFA in Berlin, or CES in Las Vegas, which are the traditional technology venues.
We needed to be in the heart of furniture and design and Salone is the event to be at. Now time was ticking. And the ambitions of what we were to demo there were high. Not just a Beosound Shape on a wall. We wanted to create an immersive initial experience.
Anna-Sophia Brune, one of the architects at B&O, came with the concept of the “dome” specifically for the Milan installation:
At first sight, it looked impossible to me, when looking at it in December 2016, being 3 months away from the event, and not even having the first engineering samples at hand. A concept like that would require 3D-audio content, sound tuning that was not created yet, and another round of “one-off” modules that worked for the event, with a super tight deadline. But this is why we love to challenge each other…
Tina Banzhaf, Sr. Global PR Manager, was driving the Milan execution and together with the local team in Italy secured a beautiful location in the Brera area. You can read the story here.
The beautiful “dome” came to life:
But it was with hard work from our installation & acoustics team.
View from above the dome:
“Generally with the installation set-up on site, everything went as planned. The biggest challenge that we faced was when we did an entire “pre-view set-up” a few weeks before where we saw that the dome made out of tiles could not curve as much as we had hoped in the concept phase. This changed the concept a bit as guests experienced the front side only, whereas the concept wished to expose the back-side and wiring as well. Showing the back side and front at the same time would have exposed the entire product, inspiring curiosity around the product from visitors and showcasing the layer of detailing we work with at Bang & Olufsen.”, Anna-Sophia Brune
Execution of the event was a success and as mentioned earlier the target press picked-up on the story “loud and clear”.
“The launch of BeoSound Shape required a spectacular venue that could empower an immersive experience, put attention to detail and still explain this new sound concept. In Brera we found the perfect location — a palazzo at Via Cusani. The installation was amazing, and with global PR efforts we hosted media, customers and partners for press viewings, one-to-ones and of course a cocktail party. People were impressed not only about the installation, but also about the new concept on living with sound. It was a true celebration, but only a kick-off to the acknowledgement of Beosound Shape worldwide.”, Tina Banzhaf
Photo shooting
Of course with the announcement of the product in Milan, all assets needed to be ready. That means all marketing photos, web pages, technical specifications, explanation videos, etc. Even if the product would not get to ship until about 4 months later (August 2017) for end-customers.
The content was beautiful as you can see:
But there was a lot of hard behind the scenes work also there:
Especially tricky because at the time of the photoshooting (end of February 2017), about 1 month before Milan event, we still had only a limited number of product/tile samples.
Emily Marie Yatman was the campaign manager at B&O, for the Beosound Shape and she was the key person orchestrating the marketing elements.
“From a marketing perspective I remember the huge challenge in taking a massively complex product and communicating this as ‘an easy to understand’ product or concept. To intrigue rather than to confuse. To inspire rather than to overwhelm. That was definitely a key marketing and communication challenge, that I think we actually managed quite well.”, Emily Marie Yatman
Configuration tool
With a few months to go (from the April 2017 public announcement until the August 2017 product shipping), there were many loose ends to get together. It is “business as usual” to use the last months to get the final details of the product in place, with a few HW & SW adjustments. However in the case of the Beosound Shape we had something unique at hand, with regards to the customer journey. We had set the ambition to have a configuration tool, that the customer can use even before purchasing the product. Allowing the users to create their totally individualized Beosound Shape (key requirement from the early consumer insights, as mentioned earlier)
The customer was meant to use the tool to:
- Design a product shape, in the configuration tool
- Choose the acoustical performance he/she would like to have
- The tool would output a recommended configuration (e.g. number of speakers & amplifiers) as well as a recommended total price
- It would also provide a unique code for the product, that the your B&O store would use to order all the needed components
- It would even create unique personalized installation instructions for your product (i.e. how to mount your specific Shape on the wall step-by-step)
- And most importantly, on the cloud it would calculate the unique acoustical parameters for your individual Beosound Shape, and via the app deliver them to your product once the setup was complete.
This was really something totally new for us, touching holistically customer experience before purchase, at the store/ordering, at installation, etc. All as a uniform journey.
In September 2016 the tool was just a primitive mock-up:
But by the time it hit the market less than a year later, it was a beautiful full-fledged tool, part of the holistic customer journey:
You can try the Beosound Shape configurator tool here.
Once again a lot of work in agile daily iterations by Damion (Concept Manager of Beosound Shape), Martin Svalgaard (Software Technical Project Manager, at B&O), Kristian Vincent Dedenroth (Website Manager at B&O at the time), Thomas Høst Andersen (Leading the App & Cloud development at B&O), just to name a few of the key people.
“This product is not about sweet spots. It is a new material for creating a visual and sonic tapestry in the home. The experience of creating a Shape needs to be more inline with designing for an interior rather than the configuration of a speaker.”, Damion Bailey
One of the last end-to-end real life scenario validations we performed in our Frederiksberg store, in Copenhagen, having a full installation executed by people that had not been part of our development team, in order to validate the full experience flow and readiness for market release.
“It was been a big challenge to unite all the software sub-systems end to end. We had 5 sub-systems, each with a team and location: Design tool, Apps, Cloud, Platform and Amplifier firmware. It required a lot of management and organizational skills, but also great team work and persistence. We were all passionate about the product, that came to life.”, Martin Svalgaard
Crossing the finish line…
It was a marathon, crossing “the line” at the end of August 2017, by releasing the product to the market for customers. About 5.5 years since the first ideas /inspiration for the product started emerging and about 2 years since the full business & development project was kicked-off.
The product was set to demonstrate that Bang & Olufsen has a unique view on sound and domestication, taking into consideration elements that target customers appreciate, such as personalization, customization and even being part of the co-creation process. The hard work paid off, by receiving a lot of press attention and awards, both from tech (CES Innovation Awards, T3, etc) and non-tech (Elle Decoration, Danish Design Awards, etc) events & publications.
But it was not just up to the sales teams to activate the product in the markets. We decided to assign a dedicated person, Anders Buchmann, part of the PM at the time, with a special role to be in the “sweet spot” between Product Management, Marketing and Markets for this product, in order to maximize the impact and get those parts of the organization fully aligned and work as a single entity.
This unique product would not be possible without the hard efforts of a lot of team members, not only from Bang & Olufsen, but also across partners and suppliers, in multiple locations. This article is a tribute to them and their constant efforts to challenge the status quo and create something unique. Because Beosound Shape itself, Exists to Create… just like the customers that have embraced it.
Some of the Beosound Shape in public installations
