Sonos Beam

Sonos Beam

5 years after launching the number one selling Playbar, Sonos has evolved the home theater again with a powerful yet affordable voice enabled soundbar.

The hub of the home

As the Lead UX designer I worked with PM, ID, Dev and Engineering to deliver an exceptional user experience in not only the home theater but in the hub of our home, the living room.

Areas of focus

• App based setup and configuration

• Voice control in the home theater

• Modular speaker configuration

• HDMI, CEC and ARC connectivity

• Touch controls

• Visual and audio interfaces

• Wall and surface mounted scenarios

• 3.0, 3.1, 5.0 and 5.1 home theater configurations

great technology becomes a great experience

They say that the best UX is invisible. That is what we were able to achieve by upgrading our TV connection from Optical to HDMI. While both cables deliver stellar sound HDMI far surpasses optical when it comes to the breadth and depth of data transfer it supports.

Optical

One way communication
Audio transfer only
Compressed surround audio


By understanding the capabilities of HDMI and how it’s features interact with televisions we were able to remove 80-100% of the home theater setup steps.

Ears and mouths

In the current voice landscape speakers and mics are in the same housing and users see them as one thing. In actuality they could not be more different. Input vs output. In the connected home we see inputs and outputs physically far apart but conceptually close. When multiple ears and mouths are in a single room (home theater) users no longer care whats listening and what is talking, they just want to be heard.

But does it work?

In order to account for the number of variables we were designing for we needed a large number of in-lab, in-home and beta testers to drill deep into the problems and identify solutions.

Shipping means details

The 80/20 rule states that the final twenty percent of the work will take eighty percent of the time that is just about right when it comes to shipping Sonos products. The details and corner cases are deep and wide and can upend a project at any point. Successfully launching a product demands close working relationships with many teams and even more people. Working across hardware and software means even more variables and potential for delays.