About the Project
Dolce Radio is a mixed-reality application that utilizes spatial audio and interprets the user’s bio-metrics to curate relaxing Ambient Music Playlists for a fully immersive auditory and therapeutic experience in the comfort of your own home.
Question: How often do people think about ways to create therapeutic listening experiences to their favorite music at home?
Audio hardware has always been limited by the need for multiple speakers, wires, and inputs to control a surround-sound system, which can be very expensive and require a lot of power.
So, what if we could digitalize the entire control system for each speaker through Spatial Computing?
With the recent announcements of HMD’s like the Meta Quest 3 and the Apple Vision Pro, I became inspired to design the concept of a Spatial Audio product that promotes ambient music.
Dolce Radio
As a futurist, it is best practice to create multiple narratives for every possible outcome in order to ensure that the proper risk assessments are performed.This outcome is only possible through mass adoption of XR and the production of mixed reality headsets that are comfortable and designed to be worn for several hours.
The Spatial Experience
Creating this application was fun but required a bit of learning the fundamentals of Spatial User Interface Design. This required me to think about how users would engage with digital interfaces through Mixed Reality.
One way to create an a satisfying experience in Mixed Reality is by considering the user’s field of view. Positioning the most important data and information within the user’s field of view of allows them to make fewer adjustments with their neck and head. Focusing on digital assets by only needing to move their eyes creates a much more comfortable experience overall.
To enhance the viewing experience even more, designers can use Full Immersion by creating an environment that completely surrounds the user with an interactive, spatial environment while also maintaining the integrity of their field of view. With Mixed Reality, hand tracking creates a much more natural experience and eliminates the need for controllers. This means that the way we interact with a tablet device can now be achieved within the space around us.
One of the key design choices Apple made was to embrace the style of Glassmorphism. This method blends with the space around us by using natural light and clear, bold text. Windows have varying levels of opacity to help the user see and focus on what’s important.
The Dolce Solution
Dolce Radio is a platform dedicated to providing relaxing ambient music that creates an immersive listening experience at home. Additionally, the listener can optimize what they hear by placing multiple digital amplifiers in a room and adjusting the attributes of each individual speaker such as the volume, treble, bass, speaker size, and location.
Spatial Audio is here. An immersive listening experience that you can customize at home is possible through Mix Reality. Rather than using physical speakers, Dolce provides digitized XR amplifiers. Add as many amplifiers as needed in any given room to create the experience of being inside the music.
Beyond a musical experience, when paired with an Apple Watch, Dolce also provides a health monitoring system that curates playlists based on the health of the user. Different music is played at different times of the day. Some playlists are designed to boost energy, while others are meant to help the listener meditate, overcome anxiety or fall asleep.
Guarding personal heath data is very important to Apple, so every user must authenticate their identity in order to use this feature. Additional ways to create a personalized listening experience is through face and eye tracking, voice, palm, and fingerprint scanning, and even your DNA to optimize the playlists that produce the best results for the listener.
This is the Future of Sonic Therapy.
Dolce Radio
Dolce Radio borrows the design of Apple’s music player but the tabs are specific to an internet radio station. Another difference is that the user can create playlists of the music played throughout the day for more personalized experiences.
To showcase the Dolce Radio product, I created a virtual apartment and placed some of the digital amplifiers throughout each room. Speakers would be visible only while wearing a mixed reality headset, therefore the product can be used without taking up space like a traditional speaker system normally does. There are no wires or inputs, only digital assets and interfaces.
Below is a gallery of images. Click on each to enlarge.
Conclusion
Dolce Radio is a product that uses spatial audio and AI to curate playlists of relaxing ambient music for the listener. The application allows the user to customize their home with multiple digital amplifiers to create a surround-sound experience more technologically advanced than any physical sound system can provide, and the use of AI enhances the listening experience by personalizing curated playlists while monitoring the bio-metrics of the user.
The anticipated release of mixed-reality headsets has increased the chances that spatial computing can become a medium that is embraced by mainstream audiences around the world. The rising popularity of Ambient Music in the 2020’s can help meet the need for more therapeutic products and solutions, and Dolce Radio can serve that need and pioneer the Future of Sonic Therapy.