Envisioning and prototyping an immersive, audio-based travel experience

For some travelers, Bose noise canceling headphones have become a must-have item, used to drown out in-flight engine and passenger noise. But once they reach their destination, travelers are likely to pack their headphones away until the return flight. So we asked ourselves, could we offer customers compelling reasons to use their headphones during their travel experiences, rather than just at the book-ends of it?

I explored this question for 6 months as part of a 4-person incubation team. Our starting question, “How might Bose play a greater role in the travel experience” prompted foundational customer research into the various reasons people travel, which yielded customer personas, and detailed journey maps detailing unmet needs and friction points in the travel experience.

A key theme from our research was that travelers fantasized about wandering around a new city, free of maps and guides, and stumbling upon a serendipitous surprise, such as a hidden gem restaurant, an impromptu concert, or an out of sight monument. Yet in reality, they were glued to their phones for directions, restaurant reviews and suggested travel itineraries because they didn’t trust that wandering would yield the magical moments they desired.

Inspired to help travelers untether themselves from their phone screens, we developed a wizard-of-oz prototype for a headphone-based travel guide that offers location-specific information tidbits and recommendations, all via audio, so travelers can stay heads up and hands-free.

Our user testing of the prototype experience confirmed that the “wander” experience of having an in-ear guide tell you where to go, what to notice, and what food and drink to try felt magical to people. It also highlighted how the experience would need to be refined in further iterations.

To build internal conviction for the in-ear travel guide, we took a show, then tell approach. First, we took our senior stakeholders (including the VP of Consumer Electronics, and the VP of Corporate Strategy and Innovation) through the prototype experience, so they could experience it for themselves. Then, we provided an overview of the technical work and strategic partnerships required to turn our concept into a functional product.

In the process of prototyping an in-ear travel guide, we realized there was a broader opportunity to develop other heads up, hands-free experiences that untethered us from our phone screens. Fueled by this conviction, we launched Audio Augmented Reality at SXSW 2018, with the travel concept as the flagship experience.

Since then, Bose launched the Bose AR app with several audio augmented reality experiences ranging from meditative soundscapes to immersive audio ‘scenes’ from the Lion King and Star Wars.