red dot: design team of the year 2008 Michael Laude and the Bose Corporate Design Center
Bose – The Form of Sound
“Why does applied science bring us so little happiness? The simple answer is that we have not yet learned to make proper use of it.” A lot has happened in the half a century since Einstein ruminated on technology in this way. Technological progress shows no sign of stopping. It now touches all aspects of our lives. As a result, life has become easier than it has ever been, at least from a technical perspective. However, have we learned to “use it properly” in the meantime? Technology never just stands alone. It is the basis, the indispensable foundation which all devices need if they are to function. Yet, due to its great complexity, it is virtually impossible for the layman to understand. Consequently, technology needs an external form if it is to be grasped, both physically and mentally, by the user. The famous German designer, Dieter Rams, whose designs still influence the aesthetics of product design today, formulated his expectation of technical devices as follows, defining the premises for proper use in the process: “Devices should be like good English butlers, they should be there when you need them and stay in the background when you don’t.” The Yearning for Perfection A company whose products perfectly live up to this expectation is the American company, Bose Corporation. The history of the company is intricately entwined with the history of its owner and founder, Dr. Amar Gopal Bose. Bose grew up near Philadelphia, the son of an Indian dissident, who had emigrated to America in the 1920s, and an American teacher. He received violin lessons from the ages of 7 to 14, but the interest that quickly grew into his life’s passion and his first career choice began he discovered as a teenager, when he quickly developed an enthusiasm for technology. “At 13 I realized I could fix anything electronic. It was amazing, I could just do it.” In the following years he ran his own radio repair shop from his parent’s home, contributing to the family income by working in the shop after school, until he was accepted at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the birthplace of the US space industry which is today still considered to be the leading university in the world for technological research and teaching. At MIT he was able to fully satiate his hunger for research and pursue his scientific curiosity. His graduate research at MIT led to the development of new, patented technologies, and at MIT’s encouragement, he founded his company based on those patents. He remained true to his alma mater throughout the years, teaching electrical engineering there for 45 years taking many of his students into his own company.
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Amar Bose founded his company in 1964. The first products were high-power amplifiers produced under contract to the U.S. military for converting battery power to AC power in aircraft and submarines. However, since completing his doctorate about eight years earlier, when he had bought a sound system that despite its technical brilliance displayed acoustic qualities that had bitterly disappointed him, he had harboured an idea that would eventually establish the real success of his business. Curious about why the music emanating from a sound system sounded so unnatural and lifeless compared to live music played in a concert hall, he decided to measure the success of his acoustic research on nothing less than the human ear. After doing experiments at Boston Symphony Hall for many years, Bose took the measurements back to MIT and analysed them. He found out that in a concert hall, only a tiny bit of the sound comes to you directly; most of it arrives after many reflections from the room. Only about 2 percent of the sound is absorbed with each reflection, so there are many reflections. However, people were only designing loudspeakers that radiate forward. The following years of research and development finally culminated in Amar Bose releasing a product in 1968 that revolutionized the high fidelity world: the Bose 901 loudspeaker, a loudspeaker that was radically different from conventional loudspeakers. Its unprecedented approach to sound reproduction came much closer to the essence and emotional impact of live music, and won immediate acclaim. The 901 had no woofers and no tweeters, which at the time every speaker was supposed to have. Instead it had one driver directed to the front and eight directed to the back. It was also very small compared with other products on the market. However, its unique blend of reflected and direct sound recreated an unprecedented similarity to a live musical performance. It was a breakthrough. Bose has retained its character as a technologically driven company over the 44 years of its existence. Research and development remains the real core of the company. 100 percent of profits are reinvested in the company’s growth and development, where a significant amount is spent on research. Hundreds of highly-qualified engineers, technicians, and designers combine to work on future solutions and improvements to existing products, sometimes for years on end. This is a rare luxury that is only possible in this form because Amar Bose remains the owner of the company and is still driven by the same passion for scientific research. “If I were the president of a publicly listed company,” claims Bose, “they would have fired me long ago. Instead of short-term profit, we look for long-term success and instead of creating shareholder value, we create customer value.” Countless instances in the life of the founder of the company and the products he has created reveal that it was often just simple everyday nuisances that inspired Amar Bose to begin intensive research which did not stop until a final
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solution was found to the problem, a patent submitted, and a product developed. For example, on a Swiss Air flight one day he was so annoyed by the noise overriding his standard airline headset that he spent the rest of the flight wondering how this background noise could be cancelled out. Eight years later, the Voyager pilots, Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager were wearing prototypes of his noise reduction headphones during their first non-stop around-the-world flight. They were delighted. Finally, the first commercial model of the QuietComfort headphones was launched on the market in 2000. Today the headphones have become both a cult and a status object for frequent travelers who would never get on a plane without their own headset. However, Bose is also active beyond the field of audio technology, including switching power amplification, biomedical testing equipment and automotive suspensions. In 2004 after 24 years of top-secret research, Bose presented a revolutionary kind of automobile suspension. The proprietary Bose suspension system couples linear electromagnetic motors and power amplifiers with a set of unique control algorithms to deliver a new standard of comfort and control – a much smoother ride than any luxury sedan, with less roll and pitch than any sports car. This development is also the result of another of those everyday experiences. Amar Bose bought a 1958 Pontiac with an air suspension, which he loved, but spent as much time under the car as he did in the driver’s seat. It’s suspension system was simply not up to the potholes that marred the streets of Massachusetts. Over the years this intrigued Bose, and in 1980, it prompted a research project to approach suspension systems in a completely different way, disregarding hardware constraints and instead focusing on what kind of performance was theoretically possible. In this way Dr. Amar Gopal Bose leads his company in a constant search for new technical solutions and the quest for perfection. He is not rushed in the process. It is much more important for him that whatever he brings to market, sits well and functions perfectly. No surprise then, that a mission of the company is simply, “better products through research.” Technology and Design Due to the untiring research activity of the founder of the company and his team, Bose possesses the technological wherewithal to produce great products. However technology alone does not explain the global success of these products. Bose has grown into a corporation that employs approximately 9,000 employees worldwide and generates annual revenues estimated at approx. USD 2.5 billion. Consumer faith in the brand is extremely high. According to a survey conducted in 2006 by the market research institute Forrester Research, which contacted almost 5,000 American households, Bose is the clear leader when it comes to trust in a particular brand, well ahead of Apple, Microsoft, Dell, Intel or Sony. According to another extrapolation made by the institute, approx. 17.5
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million households plan to buy a Bose product. So what is so special about Bose products and the Bose brand? What makes them so fascinating? There are two basic design trends in the history of entertainment electronics which follow one another. The first radios, for example, had visible valves and their exteriors proudly displayed their technical features. However, the fascination for new technology slowly evolved into a desire for radios that were easier to use. As a consequence, radio design changed in the thirties. The valves were concealed behind the surface and the loudspeakers were placed internally and hidden behind a grill or woven screen. Everything became closed inside the cabinet, which was often crafted from valuable timber, and only a few controls remained visible. In spite of this, cabinets usually remained large and ungainly items used primarily to conceal radios and gramophones. The “piece of equipment” had evolved into a “piece of furniture”. From the 1950s onwards, transistors and new plastic materials triggered a revolution in the shape and dimensions of electronic equipment. Transistors replaced the valves and miniaturization became the name of the game. Transistor technology also spread to other aspects of home electronics, with the miniaturization of the electrical components having a big impact on their design. On the one hand, the microscopic size of the technical components allowed great freedom in the design of the cabinet or housing, leading to some strange, even bizarre, designs for a while, such as telephones in the form of hamburgers or radios designed as dancing flowers. In spite of such excess, the overall trend in the following years was towards making the equipment more pleasing on the eye and ultimately trendier. Technology became a lifestyle accessory. The other major trend lay in the use of more and more hightech components in order to reach true high-fidelity, the perfect reproduction of sound and image. This led to a new fascination with technology that eventually resulted in “hightech” design: modular stereo systems that were so replete with buttons and controls that they ended up resembling laboratory equipment. This extremely technical appeal fascinated consumers in the same way that valve radios had fascinated earlier generations. Such high-tech design also had a very strong psychological component, suggesting as it did that the buyer of such a piece of equipment was well versed in technology and would only buy the best piece of equipment for his living room. The loudspeakers had to be correspondingly large, powerful and imposing. Technical products became a status symbol and in some cases were the only piece of furniture in the room with a sculptural character. Given this environment, it comes as no surprise that hi-fi devotees were initially sceptical of the Bose 901 and Bose’s range of compact sound systems. For Bose went down a path that did not conform with either the technical obsession of
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the one trend nor with the design largesse of the other. The path he took is reminiscent of that chosen by Dieter Rams at Braun, the German appliance manufacturer: clarity in design, maximum functionality, and ease of use. The Design of Sound Despite all the similarities in the underlying design premises, the point of departure is something entirely different: at Bose the form is the materialization of an acoustic quality, because Bose practices integrated design. In other words, design is understood as an integral component of the entire product development process and not as something to be tacked on later. Michael Laude, the Director of the Bose Corporate Design Center, describes their design approach as follows: “The innovative technology of the product is the origin of everything. Our design teams are focused on creating a form to present and humanize this technology, its integration into the application environment and the optimization in respect of look and feel.” It is only logical then that the design department, led by Michael Laude since 1997, does not report to the marketing department, as it does in numerous other companies, but is part of the research and development department. In other words, engineers and industrial designers work together hand in hand. An independent workgroup of highly specialized engineers and designers focus solely on the perfect design and simplification of a logical user interface. Other teams specialize in the fields of home entertainment, automotive systems, noise reduction technology, and professional systems. The development and design process culminates in products like the Wave Systems. The “acoustic waveguide” technology at the heart of these products, which makes it possible to give even the smallest devices a full-bodied sound, won Dr. Amar Bose and Dr. William Short the title of “Inventor of the Year” in 1987. Amar Bose’s brief to his chief designer, at that time John Grinkus, for the design of the first device was clear. Firstly, it should convey its excellent audio qualities in a visual form. Secondly, its design should clearly distinguish it from customary radio receivers. The result was a compact device whose basic form took its cue from loudspeaker technology. The front was harmoniously proportioned, displaying design elements taken from architecture. In 2004, ten years later, Bose launched a reinterpretation of its classic radio. “The new design is based on the visual brand appeal we have developed over time,” says Seth Green, the designer of the Wave Music System. “The main new feature of the design is the CD loading slit underneath the display. This draws the attention of the use to one single point. The new wave guides allow the profile to be even slimmer and even smaller slits at the front. This results in refined dimensions and improved sound quality.” Ultimately, development results in a “black box”, an object whose internal construction is, by definition, unknown. The user’s interest is focused solely on its functions. Even the most fundamental buttons and controls have been done away with in the new design. The system is operated solely via a remote control unit that represents the central interface
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between the user and the device. The Wave Music System is intended for anyone who wants high-quality music. The clarity of its design and compact size mean it fits into just about any room without jarring with the existing design elements. Its simple plug and play qualities make it intuitive to use while still providing the full sound of a good high fidelity stereo sound system. The same holds true for many other Bose products that, although based on the latest scientific findings, do not elevate the technology to an end in itself. Compared to many other audio manufacturers, the loudspeakers, headphones and music systems from Bose are striking, precisely because they do not struggle to be striking. They are mature products that get by without any need for special effects. They possess an elegant classicism that marries the underlying technology with perfect form to make an end product that is extremely functional and easy to use. Products, in other words, that are like English butlers, virtually invisible in the background but which free the user to concentrate on his real pursuits. In the design of its products, Bose pursues the “form follows function” maxim, not in the classical mechanical interpretation, but in the metaphorical sense. The focus is on the impact of the products, the way sound is produced and perceived, a feature which is reinforced by their subdued design. The Bose corporate profile puts it this way: “That audio products exist to provide music for everyone, everywhere, and that music - not equipment - is the ultimate benefit.” Cooperations in the Premium Segment The combination of excellent technology with a clarity of design also results in the products being extremely compatible with other brands while not competing with them. They deliver quality and radiate this to their surroundings. These qualities have already resulted in a number of very appealing ventures, for example with premium automobile manufacturers such as Audi, Cadillac, Ferrari, Maserati, Maybach, Mercedes-Benz, and Porsche, all of whom have relied on Bose to realize sound systems in the extremely difficult environment of a car interior. In many cases Bose products are the standard product used in the serial production of these models. However, Bose products are not only found in private homes, hotels, restaurants, aircraft and luxury automobiles. They are also found everywhere where highquality sound is important, such as the Olympic Games, the Sistine Chapel, the Japan National Theater, as well as concert halls and in large outdoor arenas. They are even used in space – on board the NASA space station. Thanks to these numerous technological innovations, the superb finishing and the design quality, Bose has positioned itself as a premium brand whose products address a huge variety of different markets.
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Bose is a good example of how design can “make technology useful” as Einstein once called for. In fact, their aesthetic is precisely in keeping with another one of Einstein’s principles: “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” It will be exciting to see what solutions the company laboratories put on the market in the coming years to improve the quality of sound and the quality of life of its customers – true to its philosophy that research is the process of realizing the fictions of yesterday into the products of tomorrow. Press contact: Astrid Ruta Communications Manager Phone: +49 (0)201-30 10 4-33 E-mail: ruta@dznrw.com Sabine Schnedler Press and Public Relations Phone: +49 (0)201-30 10 4-43 E-mail: schnedler@dznrw.com www.red-dot.de/press
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