Hey LARS.
The small things leave your head and get done.
Your phone stays in your pocket.
Press
One button. Nothing to unlock, nothing to open.
Speak
Say it the way you would say it to a person.
Done
LARS understands it and handles it. You carry on.
Look up.
You rarely reach for your phone because you want to. You reach for it because something small needs doing and it is the only thing within reach that can do it. You go to add one item, and you put the phone down three minutes later.
LARS takes the small thing without the screen. Your phone stays in your pocket, in your bag, in another room. LARS/01 records with no phone nearby at all, so you stay where you are, with whoever you are with.
- 01Take the phone out of your pocket.
- 02Unlock it.
- 03Find the app.
- 04Open the shopping list.
- 05Tap the new item field.
- 06Type “milk”.
- 07Tap done.
- 08Lock the phone and put it back.
Eight steps. Screen on, in your hand.
- 01Press the button.
- 02Say “add milk to the shopping list”.
- 03Let go.
Three steps. No screen. The phone never comes out.
LARS is not trying to be more useful than your phone. It is trying to be enough, so the phone can stay where it is.
Understood, not just heard.
LARS works out what you meant, then does the thing that needed doing.
“Add milk to my shopping list”
Shopping list
Added to your list
“Remind me to call the dentist tomorrow morning”
Reminder
Reminder set
“Note: the anodised finish looked better in daylight”
Note
Note saved
“Email Marc that the prototype slipped a week”
Email sent
A computer with one button.
- Input
- One button
- Display
- None
- Microphone
- MEMS, high sensitivity
- Feedback
- Haptic and a single LED
- Link
- Bluetooth Low Energy
- Offline
- Records without your phone
- Battery
- Rechargeable, days not hours
- Body
- Brushed steel on charcoal, 8 mm
Say it once.
Then forget it.
You do not open LARS. You do not check LARS. It sits where you left it and waits for the one moment it is useful, which is the moment a thought arrives and you would rather not carry it.
The thought leaves your head and lands somewhere it will be found again.
It does not have to be on your wrist.
Nothing has to be facing you. There is no screen to read and no camera to aim, because LARS only has to hear you. It goes wherever you happen to be, and the button is always in the same place.
A woven strap, worn like a watch. Your hand already knows where it is.
On a cord, close to your voice and out of the way of your hands.
Clipped to a strap, where you can reach it without stopping.
In a cradle on the dashboard, for the things you think of while driving.
Standing in its dock, charging, still listening for one press.
Face up on the table, for the thing everyone agrees to and nobody writes down.
Your voice is not the product.
- Where it lives
- Your whisprs are stored in Europe, on European infrastructure.
- How long
- Recordings are deleted automatically. Seven days by default.
- Who hears them
- One European provider transcribes your audio. Nobody else.
- What we sell
- Hardware. Never your voice, never your data, never advertising.
The detail is on the privacy page, in plain language.
The personal computer we were promised.
In the seventies, the personal computer was going to disappear into daily life. It would know your voice. It would keep the small things in order so you could think about the large ones.
Instead we got screens. Then better screens, then screens on our wrists, then a phone that asks for attention four hundred times a day.
LARS is the other version. One button, no screen, and the discipline to do one thing properly.
LARS/01 is being built now.
Leave your email and we will tell you when it is ready.