Incloud is a smart, wireless speaker design with an integrated light fixture for acousto-optic modulation.
Depending on how you consume music, your speaker defines the listening experience. The speaker you bring to the beach will change in sound and appearance from the speaker you use for at-home listening. While durability is the main focus of the former, quality acoustics make the most of home speaker systems.
Designer: Zhipeng Huang
Designing a wireless speaker for the home environment, Zhipeng Huang conceptualized Incloud. Defined by its cylindrical shape and open center, Incloud is a smart speaker that doubles as a lamp, which users can program to coincide with their nightly routines and sleep schedules.
Inspired by the shape that a sheet of dough makes when draped around a rolling pin, Incloud keeps a cylindrical silhouette while maintaining an open center. Located in the center cavity, Huang equipped Incloud with an acousto-optics modulator that syncs the speaker’s soundwaves with its integrated light fixture. This intersection is what puts Incloud’s speaker design above current models.
The round shape of Incloud lends to an easily portable device that can cling onto any edge with its open center. While the overall structure of Incloud maintains a minimalist appeal, the speaker’s simplistic build gives way to intuitive usability.
The device’s central light piece immediately suggests its proper configuration, signaling to users that the speaker is located on the device’s outer shell. On one end of Incloud, users can find a simple control interface that hosts the volume and light dials.
Huang also developed an app to pair with Incloud for users to control the light’s strength as well as its projected color. From the same app, users can even program their sleep schedules so that Incloud will incrementally dim every hour, on the hour as bedtime grows closer.
