Ao AIR Atmos

The challenge of delivering the “Better air for life” promise was the need to create a product with a new ‘wear style for commuters’ to adopt and receive the benefit of Ao technology so that it would feel intuitive to use and comfortable to wear.

Ao Air came to us with ambitious plans for their powered filtration system to clean air and the assertion that seeing your face was more ‘Human’ and therefore more social.  Our biggest challenge was to prevent feature creep and to build something people will want to wear when they need protection from pollution.   

The team acted as one and Foundry led by scanning faces with a focus on an Asian population for the first launch region.  This informed the exploration into performance testing new components and weight testing a new center of gravity for wearing on the head in prototyping for comfort.  Several new methods of construction with new materials were developed while exploring a new design language with a focus on intuition. Color studies focused on the urban commuter connecting the home and office centers for the user.  The Foundry Team delivered cosmetic models to reference the design language, alongside working prototypes for CES 2020 with working electronics and responsive mechanicals for fit trialing users, pre-orders and media exposure.