US – Tech company Sol is introducing Sol Reader, a wearable headset similar to Apple’s Vision Pro and Meta’s Quest Pro, but solely designed to immerse users in reading and the world of e-books – free from distractions. The company describes the product as ‘noise-cancelling for your eyes’. Sol previously received £3.8m ($5m, €4.4m) in a funding round in 2022.
Available to pre-order before officially launching in autumn 2023, Sol Reader will retail for £267 ($350, €311). The gadget displays text and can be controlled using a wireless remote control to turn the pages, allowing ease of use and the option of reading hands-free on the spot. The battery has an estimated 25 hours of reading time after a single charge.
‘We’re less concerned with spatial computing or augmented and virtual realities and more interested in how our personal devices can encourage us to spend our time wisely,’ says Sol CEO Ben Chelf. ‘We are building the Sol Reader specifically for a single important use case – reading. And while Big Tech surely will improve specs and reduce cost over time, we can now provide a time-well-spent option at 10% of the cost of Apple’s Vision Pro.’
Our Reading Market report examined how digital and interactive cross-reality book formats are being embraced by consumers seeking escapism and an immersive experience.
Sol Reader, US
Drumsheds, UK
UK – A 608,000-square-feet warehouse in Tottenham, London, previously home to an Ikea store for 17 years, is set to undergo a remarkable transformation into one of the capital’s most prominent cultural venues. Known as Drumsheds, the venture is the latest project by Broadwick, the company that previously turned a disused printing press in Rotherhithe, London, into clubbing destination Printworks.
Drumsheds aims to become a hub for music, arts, culture and community activities. With a capacity of 15,000, it will rank among the largest indoor venues in London, surpassing renowned locations like Alexandra Palace and Wembley Arena.
The space will retain the post-industrial aesthetic by preserving key industrial elements of the warehouse. Guests can explore the old lift shafts, loading bays and machinery, creating an immersive experience within the vast space.
‘We want Drumsheds, like all the spaces we create, to be new centres of cultural gravity that provide the basis for human connection,’ Simeon Aldred, the director of strategy at Broadwick, said in a statement. ‘A connection that people crave now more than ever.’
Broadwick has been instrumental in revitalising disused business spaces. In Temporary Urbanism Futures, we previously analysed similar venues and projects where empowered communities re-interpret urban environments freely and sustainably to fulfil their ever-changing needs.
Back to the F**kture, Episode 18.
Design and experience strategy isn’t a top-down process for the privileged few, but a collaborative engagement along a narrative arc of surprise and transformation that changes audience and designer alike, according to The Experience Book authors Adam Scott and Dave Waddell.
The age of experience, as I learn in my latest LS:N Global Back to the F**kture podcast, has been replaced by the age of transformation. Or rather, as The Experience Book authors Adam Scott and Dave Waddell explain, one has been subsumed into the other, so that when we speak of experience, we are really speaking about transformative moments that take us along an unexpected, and sometimes unknown and unknowable journey of change, challenge, and if we get it right, catharsis. Dive into the latest episode of Back to the F**kture now.
This year’s Innovation Debrief explores some of the positive aftershocks left behind from the pandemic: from the AI explosion to a corporate reckoning about how businesses should actually be run, change is afoot. The opportunities are there for the taking – but only for those resilient businesses and brands willing to place people and planet before profit.
Purchase the full report here. Members of LS:N Global can get free access to this report here.
Innovation Debrief 2023-2024
