FORMATION FOR BOWERS & WILKINS
CREATING THE INDUSTRY-DEFINING, IMMERSIVE SOUNDSTAGE AND TRANSFORMING A COMPANY.
We are defined by the questions that we’re asked. In this case, Bowers & Wilkins asked, “Why should people sacrifice quality for convenience?”
Wireless is everywhere. Its convenience comes at the price of a reduction in quality, and for low-fidelity music consumption, this is good enough. However, truly immersive, high-fidelity, wireless soundstages are notoriously difficult to achieve. The difficultly lies in the syncing of devices, as even the smallest audio synchronisation delay creates distortion and disorientation, resulting in an entirely suboptimal experience.
From Abbey Road Studios to Skywalker Ranch to lounges around the world Bowers & Wilkins have relentlessly evolved, ensuring their place as the definitive audiophile brand. Every Bowers & Wilkins product is created to achieve extraordinary acoustic levels, and as such their form is always a result of gaining the very best sound experience.
I led our hybrid team of product, industrial, interface and materials designers, as we worked alongside Bowers & Wilkins acoustic engineers and technologists, to develop the world’s first high-resolution, wireless audio visual experience. One that lived up to Bowers & Wilkins’ values of craftsmanship and excellence, and one that would serve as the launchpad for the next evolution of the company – from audiophile brand, to technology company.
Months of in-depth research into how people around the world lived and interacted with their audio-visual technologies informed our thinking and uncovered a simple truth – a truly remarkable experience is out of reach as the available technology requires users to become experts, and most people simply have other things to do.
Guided by this clear need for an elegant, invisible and advanced solution, three holistic design principals defined the work: harmonious to your space; responsive to your intent; natural to your understanding.
The result is Formation: a seamless user experience, effortlessly synthesising complex multi-platform integration into a single, beautifully simple ecosystem.
Through the development of a pioneering wireless technology, with an imperceptible one microsecond sync between speakers, we were able to deliver a flawless high-resolution audio experience. Using 96/24 bit audio resolution streaming, with twice the fidelity of the leading wireless speaker brand, Formation produces the purest, clearest audio experience ever attained wirelessly.
And where all systems fail due to proprietary, walled-garden technology that prevent the inclusion of ‘out of brand’ elements, Formation demonstrates its deep understanding of users and their needs; any audio device can be brought into the Formation ecosystem. The Formation Audio box allows users to integrate everything from their favourite streaming services to their analogue turntable, delivering an unrivalled combination of high-resolution audio performance and absolute convenience.
THE FORMATION SCREEN INTERFACE INTEGRATES ALL DEVICES INTO A SINGLE POINT OF INTERACTION
"James was instrumental in helping Bowers & Wilkins, the world’s oldest and most highly regarded audio brand, transform from an elegant but simple loudspeaker maker into a bleeding-edge technology and user experience focused company.
There were only a few people on the planet that were able to truly understand what we were trying to accomplish, and the multitude of things that needed to be done to make it happen. Of those, James was the only one who was able to chart that path, not just for where we were going, but for the brand and heritage which needed to be protected on that journey.
He is a deeply detail-oriented designer who understands people: he understands how they think, how they’re motivated, how they become confused and what makes them feel joy. He understands how to work with, and motivate, a team. Uniquely, James doesn’t have the towering ego that many with his talent fall victim to - happily accepting a great idea from anywhere - then making it better.”
PETER NELSON
CHIEF PRODUCT OFFICER, BOWERS & WILKINS
