Need to Know
16 : 12 : 19

By Olivia Houghton, Holly Friend, Alex Hawkins and Kathryn Bishop

Spotify’s at-home soundscapes, a t-shirt that generates electricity and consumers are frustrated when travel brands forget their preferences.

In today's news:

Space10 is bringing futures research to Delhi

Spotify debuts AR to curate the at-home music experience

This t-shirt could charge your phone

Stat: Consumers seek hyper-personalisation from travel brands

Space10 is bringing futures research to Delhi

Space10 Delhi. Photography by Athul Prasad

Space10 Delhi. Photography by Deepshikha Jain

New Delhi – Ikea's Copenhagen-based company research and design lab is opening in the thriving culture hub of south Delhi.

The new space is billed as a collaborative platform where experts, creatives and specialists can meet, experiment and prototype solutions to enable a better future for people and the planet, from augmented reality to clean energy solutions. It will also host community talks and exhibitions as well as offering rapid prototyping facilities for local and international designers.

While Space10 has previously popped up in cities from Shanghai to Nairobi, the Delhi location is open until April 2020, making it the company’s first semi-permanent location. ‘We want to be where the future is,’ says Kaave Pour, managing director at Space10. ‘India has a young, educated and technology-savvy population and will soon be the most populated country on Earth, with a fifth of the world’s youth living there.’

With a technology-savvy youth population that is set to outnumber China’s, India is a key market for brands hoping to explore the next generation of sustainable and scalable solutions.

Spotify debuts AR to curate the at-home music experience

Spotify and Magic Leap

Global – Spotify has collaborated with Magic Leap to create a spatially aware app that lets users virtually pin albums, artists and tracks to specific locations in their home.

With the help of Magic Leap’s augmented reality headset, Spotify users can organise their music library through soundscapes that can be curated for different rooms. ‘The launch of Spotify marks an evolution in the way you can see, hear and experience the bands and artists that you love,’ explains Magic Leap in a statement. As users walk around their home wearing the headset, they can see album covers where they pinned them.

The partnership marks the first time Magic Leap has integrated with a major streaming music platform. Looking ahead, Magic Leap sees this kind of feature extending beyond music: ‘We see a time in the not too distant future when spatial computing will extend to the wider world of podcasts, audiobooks and storytelling.’

As we explore in our Programmable Realities macrotrend, new tools are extending our experience of the world, and facilitating an entirely new way of engaging with products and services.

This t-shirt could charge your phone

Spain – Made with a prototype bio-based ‘e-textile’, the shirt could be developed for use by remote workers or military personnel.

Designed by researchers at the University of Malaga (UMA) in collaboration with Italian Institute of Technology in Genoa (IIT) and shared in the journal of Advanced Functional Materials, the low-cost design generates electricity from the temperature difference between the human body and surrounding environment.

While to date, e-textiles have been developed using chemical elements commonly used in electronic devices, this project takes a new direction by generating electricity using more affordable and less toxic bio-based materials. The textile features a solution that, when heated through activity or movement by the wearer, penetrates and adheres to cotton, thus obtaining electrical properties but from biodegradable materials.

Building on their research, the UMA and IIT scientists are developing further use cases for the textile, for example that it could generate light and become reflective or even charge a mobile phone without a charger. For more future-facing examples of such generative materials, read our Material Far Futures report.

Photography by Anomaly

Stat: Consumers seek hyper-personalisation from travel brands

Today’s travellers expect brands to hyper-personalise their trips, according to the Travelport Global Digital Traveler Research 2019 report. The study, of 23,000 travellers across 20 countries, found that 42% of travellers want to personalise their booking through add-ons such as extra legroom, additional baggage allowance and meal upgrades. However, they are frustrated when companies do not remember their preferences for future trips, with 35% complaining about this, up 4% on 2018.

The study also found India’s travellers to be the most digitally savvy in the world for the third year running. Some 81% have used a mobile device to book a trip and 79% use social media to research their travel plans.

As travellers’ desire for hyper-personalisation accelerates, there is an opportunity for brands to create environments that change based solely on consumers’ needs and preferences. For more, explore our Liberation Luxury macrotrend.