The Project

A speculative prototype

Humbo was developed in 2011 through Nokia Design Strategic Projects in Los Angeles. The project imagined an everyday world where people could maintain personal broadcast channels and tune through a live field of voices, music, rooms, and ambient sound. Its working device used an N900 as a streaming engine and carried the physical cues of radio: a broad tuning dial, a VU meter, a three-position mechanical switch, a momentary “peek” button, a speaker, a microphone, and a battery.

Here, speculative names an expanded terrain of possibility. Prototype names the significant functional implementation of that terrain. Humbo was built as an artifact from a world where personal broadcasting already had ordinary rituals, equipment, and social habits.

This speculative exploration and prototype came about at a time where big tech was closing previously open platforms, and reifying the control over networked media experiences. We wondered what a more distributed, decentralized approach to networked media could look like.

A personal radio station

Project Audio began with a proposition that was both simple and expansive: what if every person had a broadcast channel? The project pitch described “one box, one person, one channel, one voice,” with each portable object acting as a small radio station. Broadcasting could become a mode of personal communication, carried through live voice, ambient sound, music, or the sounds of a place.

Humbo gave that proposition a body. The project called for a personal, portable, internet-connected audio streaming and receiving device. It used a Nokia N900 as its internal engine and surrounded the phone with a dedicated set of physical controls: a 360-degree tuning dial, a three-position mode switch, an analog VU meter, a volume mechanism, a momentary peek button, a speaker, a microphone, and a battery.

The project archive calls the device a Personal Radio Station. “Humbo,” marked FPO in the working specification, was a portable internet-connected audio streaming and receiving device. Each active device could become a station. Other Humbos could tune in. A person could broadcast their surroundings, listen to someone else, or send a muffled stream that carried audible presence while leaving speech indistinct.

The proposition gave broadcasting an intimate scale. Humbo treated a channel as something a person could inhabit: a small ongoing audio presence for friends, strangers, or anyone moving through the dial.

The phone as engine, the object as interface

The project deliberately moved the central question into the object around the phone. A phone arrives with a settled set of interaction expectations: a screen, touch, menus, notifications, personal ownership, and contexts shaped around looking down at a small rectangle. Those expectations narrow the range of gestures, distances, attention patterns, and social meanings available to an audio experience.

Humbo used the N900 as a technical engine for streaming and playback. Its public identity came from the object around it. The design imagined a person turning a broad dial, waiting for the meter to swing, listening for a station, and holding the device as a radio. The enclosure created room for a different question: what does networked communication feel like when the phone supplies the computation and another object supplies the interaction?

This is the value of working through an alternate container. Applied Speculation and Design Fiction can move a question into a form with different affordances, habits, and expectations. A dedicated object can stretch the semantics of communication through weight, distance, tactility, sound, mechanical resistance, and shared attention.

The proposed interaction

The Humbo MkII specification organized the proposed experience into three modes: Listening, Broadcasting, and Muffled Broadcasting. The three-way switch would make the state of the device physical and immediate. There was no off switch in the proposed interaction.

In the proposed Listening mode, the dial would sweep across a limited field of active stations. The project imagined fewer than twenty-four stations for the MkII prototype. The gaps between them could carry static or another aural indication that no station had been found. Tuning a station would cause the analog meter to swing. The peek button could play the station’s identifier, or give a small audio primitive when the dial rested between stations.

The proposed Broadcasting mode would turn the device into a station that another Humbo could find. The microphone would send a live stream and the meter would indicate its level. The rotary control would have no role in this mode, leaving the body of the device quiet while the person’s surroundings became the broadcast.

The proposed Muffled Broadcasting mode would keep the channel present while making speech and other sounds semantically uncertain. The specification proposed low-pass filtering or extreme compression. The result would communicate that someone was there, without delivering a fully intelligible account of what they were saying.

Tuning was the social ritual

The project notes compared Humbo with two related Project Audio propositions. AudioJumper treated friends as presets. BillCast organized discovery around local proximity. Humbo used the long turn of a dial, with stations distributed across a field that could contain active spots, empty stretches, favorites, and call signs.

Humbo is the HAM radio of audio broadcasting.

You turn and turn and turn the dial, seeking things out.

Humbo is about dialing-in, sweeping through perhaps empty stretches of the broadcast spectrum.

Tuning made discovery gradual. A station could be recognized by its position, revisited later, or found by moving through the empty space around it. The ritual held uncertainty in the interaction itself. The listener did not choose from a list of names and thumbnails.

A Thematic Take On AudioJumper, BillCast and Humbo — The UX of Tuning-In

Humbo is the HAM radio of audio broadcasting.

Turn and turn the dial, seeking things. There is a sense of what seems to be where on the dial: dial-in, sweep empty stretches, mark spots.

Films as interaction studies

The source volume contains several kinds of film work, and they carry different kinds of evidence. PersonalInternetRadio.mov, 23.7 seconds, presents changing waveform traces beside analog VU-meter graphics. PersonalInternetRadio-TuningIn.mov, 15.4 seconds, continues that study through changing meter responses and sparse tuning states. These two films read as conceptual UX probes: they explore the audiovisual grammar of tuning and signal without claiming to show the finished device in use.

The 70.1-second “Six Billion” title film places the proposition beside the object and the lab. Its title card asks, “Imagine if each of us 6 billion had our own radio station?” before moving through the assembled enclosure and the line “For everyone.” The 28.8-second rough cut carries similar footage alongside editing instructions. The longer August 3 camera clips show people handling the enclosure near test equipment and a computer. Together, these films connect the idea, the object, and the work of making while leaving the exact live behavior of the prototype open.

From proposition to electronics

The July 25, 2011 Aeolab MkII proposal divided the build into three short phases: initial research and development on the N900, a rough functional prototype with breadboarded hardware, and a final prototype with custom PCBs, revised software, and an integrated enclosure. The archive photographs show that progression as a set of parts that could be handled, wired, tested, and eventually gathered into one object.

The custom board joined the networked phone engine to the controls that gave the device its character. A blue rotary control projected from the board. A separate strip carried three switches. Wires, connectors, battery cells, and a meter made the system legible as a physical arrangement rather than a phone application with a decorative shell.

Making in the workshop

Material-making is sense-making. For this kind of applied speculation, model making and prototyping belong within the work: the people discussing a listening gesture need ready access to the tools, materials, and people who can build it. Moving quickly from an idea to a thing in the hand lets them feel the size of a dial, try a grip, and examine how the controls sit together.

An integrated workshop keeps those conversations close to the making. A model maker can take part in the discussion, try a fitting, bring the object back, and hear what people notice while handling it. Treating fabrication as an external handoff separates those exchanges. The facility needs to support discussion, electronics, programming, machining, fitting, and assembly as part of the same ongoing work.

Humbo’s photographs bring that work into view: wooden bodies, machined fronts, loose controls, a board held between fingers, and the open enclosure on the bench. The large side dials of the earlier prototype remain visible alongside the smaller controls and carefully fitted panels of the refined unit.

The meter made audio visible without making it visual

The VU meter was a central design decision. It gave broadcasting and listening a physical signal while keeping the experience primarily auditory. A swing could show that a station was present, that sound was moving through the device, or that someone might be listening. The meter offered a small visual confirmation without turning the experience into a screen interface.

The archive contains studies of rectangular and circular meter hardware, including dimensions and cutout references. The assembled Humbo used the rectangular meter as part of the stainless front, above the speaker. The result gave the object the visual vocabulary of a radio while preserving the possibility that a person could operate it by feel and listen without watching.

A physical proposition for a different kind of communication

The Project Audio pitch described its aim as inverting point-to-point communication and preserving “the power of live voice.” Humbo gave that inversion a physical form. The specification described broadcasting, listening, and muffled broadcasting as modes of the device. Another person could turn toward the channel, hear the meter respond, and find a voice or room somewhere in the field.

That set of behaviors carried a different social vocabulary from calling, messaging, or opening an app. The device established a relationship between a person and a channel, between a hand and a dial, and between a voice and an uncertain audience. The phone made the network possible.

Humbo remains an important Project Audio artifact because it joined a speculative proposition to an assembled object. Its wood, stainless steel, meter, speaker, switches, circuit board, battery, and N900 each held a part of the question. Together they formed a personal radio station that could be tuned, handled, heard, and imagined as part of everyday life.

Domain practices in the work

Humbo is HCI / UX and IXD research expressed through an industrial object, an audio interaction system, and working electronics for network broadcasting.

An implemented field of possibility

Humbo gave Project Audio a working object for examining how audio sharing might be encountered through a device rather than a screen. Its material form and functioning behavior held together a social service, an interaction model, a listening ritual, and a piece of consumer electronics. The prototype remains a record of speculative prototyping as an applied design practice: a functioning artifact that made a possible world available to hear, handle, and discuss.

The assembled Humbo enclosure, with its stainless front, speaker, VU meter, and side controls.

A hand turns Humbo's broad tuning dial while the device is connected to its external electronics.

The electronics before enclosure integration: N900, battery pack, custom board, tuning control, switch strip, and VU meter.

The custom electronics, with the rotary control and three-button strip separated from the main board.

The reverse of the custom board, showing solder points, wiring, and the control connection.

The N900 interface board and blue 360-degree tuning control.

VU-meter hardware studies and dimensional references for the physical audio display.

A rectangular yellow VU-meter display study considered for Humbo.

A circular analog VU-meter hardware reference.

Control mounts in the open enclosure.

Enclosures, faceplates, and control fittings on the bench.

The N900 and its connected audio electronics.

The enclosure with its battery holder alongside.

Fitting hardware inside the wooden enclosure.

Humbo, with its top controls and shaped meter window.

Three controls and a mesh opening in the wooden top.

The meter fitted to the front of the enclosure.

Checking the N900 mounting plate by hand.

The board and enclosure together at the bench.

The rotary control and circuit board in the hand.

Electronics beside the enclosure and loose control panel.

Machined fronts and control fittings.

Wooden enclosures and their circular control recesses.

The phone, board, dial, and meter on the table.

The front panel and meter on the bench.

Testing the assembled Humbo beside an oscilloscope.

Handling a wired panel beside the enclosure work.

Control fittings, wiring, and the exposed interior.

Examining the phone and its mounting plate.

Side controls fitted to the wooden body.

Powered electronics on the table.

Checking the board beside the open enclosure.

The analog meter connected to the phone electronics.

The reverse of the board in the hand.

The rotary assembly alongside its enclosure.

Trying the top panel on the enclosure.

Examining the board and its connections.

Humbo working prototype

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