Bowers & Wilkins

A New Design Language For
The Formation Home App

The mobile app evolves from a device management app to a holistic audio companion with AI curated personalized playlists so users always get the best listening experience on their Bowers & Wilkins products.

Role
Product Designer

Contribution
–> XFN Alignment
–> Product Design
–> Prototyping
–> Design Spec

Brand
Bowers & Wilkins

Launch
MAR 2020

Hero Screens

Spatial by Nature
Audio experiences are inherently spatial. The visual design language reflects that by subtle lighting effects, spatial illustrations and dimensional motion.

The content is the hero, filling the user's space.

Elegant Performance
Dark blue almost black and bright-gold colors references luxurious performance to reflect
the quality and sophistication of Bowers & Wilkins
audio products.

Behind the Scenes
—
Design Concept & Exploration

Competitive Benchmark

Competitors
Looking at other speaker companies with apps that aggregate content or music streaming apps is became clear that most of them use flat black or white colors and neutral shades of grey with a single branded accent color. Likely to not compete with the uncontrollable color schemes of content art.

Bowers & Wilkins Formation 1.0
The Formation Home app had launched primarily as a means to setup and manage the users speakers and offer rudimentary playback control. The app blended right in with the competition in its use of black as the dominant color and warm shades of grey. Looking rather minimalistic and technical.

Inspiration & Mood

dimenisionality through light and geometry

black ≠ black

Language Vocabulary

Account & Services

Lives and Breathes Audio
Small details playfully reference the
acoustic DNA of Bowers & Wilkins.

A randomly generated pattern with a holographic foil effect, changing colors as the mobile device is tilted represents a unique user ID

instead of generic dots, lines represending sound pressure are being used as indicators of password characters

Content Attribution

Service Attribution
In order to allow content aggregation in the Formation app, streaming services required a clear content atribution, so the user would always be aware of the source of the content they are browsing and listining to