Project Alfred

A cross-functional initiative to define the strategic vision, UX architecture, and design language for a fully connected Bose ecosystem. Below is a sample of artifacts that represents the goals, scope, and high level outcomes from the work.

Team — Bose & Fjord
Duration — Aug – Nov 2016

My Role — UX & Interaction Design Lead

Contributed to UX architecture across multiple service area work streams, developing interaction patterns and flow logic that connected disparate system components
Collaborated with Fjord team on experience principles and positioning, helping translate strategic intent into concrete design decisions

Colorful digital illustration showing a variety of social media app icons, communication devices like phones and laptops, and digital notifications with a chart or screen displaying contacts and messages.

Most companies design products. Alfred was an attempt to design an entire world.

Bose partnered with Fjord to ask a question that doesn't get asked often enough: what if every product we make got better because of every other product we make? Alfred was the answer — a cross-functional initiative to define the strategic vision, UX architecture, and design language for a fully connected Bose ecosystem.

The goal wasn't an app update. It was a reframe of what Bose could mean to a person's life.

Alfred Positioning —Content, family and friends. Intimately connected.

Deliver astonishing content and communication experiences that create intimate connections (Nearness), bring Bose experiences to life faster (Immediacy) and maintain seamless execution even when contexts shift (Continuity).

Graphic with text emphasizing the importance of being connected to family and friends, with phrase 'Important!' written in large orange letters.

How it happened —
40 Designers.
4 Months.
One Vision.

A group of 40 designers and strategists from Bose and Fjord joined forces, co-located across New York and Framingham, MA. Built on a Make Shop model, the team worked across three phases — converging, generating, and committing — to design the future of Bose.

Collage of images showing people at a conference or workshop, office buildings, a group walking outside, notes and sticky notes on whiteboards, a meeting room with participants, and a storefront

Group of people attending a presentation in a bright, modern room with large windows, and various posters, sticky notes, and printed materials on the walls and tables. The image includes a digital illustration of a woman with glasses and a pink overlay, along with slides and notes about Bose's technology development and project milestones.

We asked ourselves, Where does Bose own the experience — and where does it simply enable?

Using a Me/We/Us focus framework and a 1/1+/Many device category matrix, the team developed 5 service areas that framed Bose's experiential future. Each was supported by key cases, capability storyboards, and feasibility assessments.

Seamless Connections

Your Bose ID travels with you. The system knows your location, your devices, your household, your contacts — handling the logistics of pairing and routing so you never have to think about which speaker is in which room.

A chart comparing device categories for different groups labeled ME, WE, and US, with columns for 1 device, 1+ devices, and many devices.

Close-up of person holding a smartphone displaying a music app with contact profiles, a current song, and a progress bar, against a blurred background with text about content, family, and friends.

Service Areas

The 5 human-centered avenues through which Bose’s future experiences will be deployed and evolved over time.

Being Available Together, Smart Content and Defining Moments are prioritized to be launched first.

Focus Areas

Smart Content

The system learns your listening and viewing patterns across Spotify, Pandora, Netflix — surfacing recommendations and flagging what the people closest to you are consuming right now. The idea that your dad's playlist could pull you back into a shared ritual you'd let slip was the emotional core.

Screenshot of an app interface showing a scene called 'Yoga in the park' with images of a park, people practicing yoga, and devices like speakers and soundlinks. The app includes details such as location at Central Park, NY, and playlist tracks.

In Conclusion

Alfred didn't ship wholesale — that was never the expectation. But the themes it surfaced didn't evaporate when the engagement ended. They traveled back with the people who'd spent four months living inside the vision. The connected app experience, the ecosystem lens, the habit of asking how a product behaves as part of something larger rather than on its own — these became harder to ignore in the conversations that followed. Service design thinking took root. Priorities shifted. That's what this kind of work is for: not to be implemented in full, but to raise the floor of what a team believes is possible.

Experience Storyboards

Infographic about run club, featuring steps for joining, starting to listen, giving feedback, and staying connected, with illustrations of people running, listening on headphones, and using a smartphone.

Infographic illustrating the process of sharing content from a mobile device, including scenes of people collaborating, connecting devices, capturing scenes, adding to history, and rewatching moments.

A Peek into the (speculative) Future

The Design Concept is an attempt to envision a Bose product launch from the future — written and designed as if it had already launched, and the ecosystem had already shipped. Instead of hedging with conditionals, the team had to commit. What does the app actually look like? What does it feel like to get a notification from your Bose system on a Tuesday morning?

Just Enjoy

The system captures recurring moments — a Sunday yoga session, a nightly dinner playlist — and learns to anticipate them. It takes the configuration work off the table so the experience can be fully ambient.

Shared Experiences

Bose as a social layer. Not a social network, but a thin, intentional presence layer built on top of the content you already love. Who's listening. What they're listening to. Whether they're available. A join button.

Multiple overlapping screenshots of a smartphone settings app, showing options for notifications, privacy, family, locations, services, and connected devices.