Private and Public Aspects of Smart Jewellery - a Design Exploration Study

In recent years, design and form factors of wearables have converged towards traditional jewellery, such as rings, necklaces and bracelets. Even though the aesthetics of smart jewellery have been gradually improved, many current commercial pieces are still mainly functionality and technology-driven. In this paper, we take steps to better understand the design and wearing aspects of smart jewellery. We investigate how jewellery wearers associate functionalities with body locations in a design exploration session with industrial design students using the terms "private" and "public" as keys. Results suggest that with privacy in mind, smart jewellery designs move towards the wearer's hands and fingers and selected data sources originating from the wearer's body were preferred, while designs for "public" information presentation tended to be moved to higher locations on the body, i.e. head, neck and chest, and to be fed from external data sources.