Animate objects: aesthetics, encoding and personalisation – a guide for designing holistic wearable technology

<p>This PhD creative practice research explores the encoding of value in wearable technology and augmented personal objects.</p> <p>Situated at the intersection of product design, post-digital craft practice and human-computer interaction. This research explores the co-emergence of the digital, material and human and how we might cultivate enduring enchantment in wearables through the animist design lenses of engagement, transference, embodiment and ensoulment.</p> <p>Building on the theories of ‘cognitive artefacts’ (Heersmink, 2016) and ‘evocative objects’ (Turkle, 2007), the contextual review locates contemporary wearable technology in an extended linage of assistive and mnemonic devices for spiritual and physical wellbeing.</p> <p>In a fast-moving contemporary world ruled by speed, greed and the superficial, ‘there has been a fracturing of the bridge between our spiritual inner life and the material one’ (Del Rio, 2007, p. 92). As we move into the post-digital age, contemporary philosophers, theorists, anthropologists and technologists are calling for a return to the slow, holistic, and spiritual - a re-enchantment of modern life.</p> <p>Wearables have long been coveted by humans for their mysterious, symbolic, evocative and animistic powers. Rapid technological advancements and the rise of ubiquitous computing means these objects can now be augmented to extend our senses and enhance our lives like never before. So why does all this ‘techno glimmer’ often fail to provide enduring enchantment beyond short-lived functional devices, gimmicks and gadgets destined for bedside drawers and landfill? Exploring new modalities of post-digital design practice, this research builds upon my expertise as an industrial designer and a jeweller delving into the field of HCI to explore how we might design the next generation of wearables to endure, empower and resonate on a spiritual, personal and physical level. Whilst theory in the field of enchanted technology and digital jewellery is growing from a HCI and contemporary jewellery perspective (McCarthy, Wright, Wallace, Dearden, 2006), the industrial designer is often absent from this conversation.</p> <p>Part auto-ethnography, part collaborative and reflexive practice, this researchthrough-design methodology, RtD (Frayling, 1993), tests a range of approaches to creating animism and the conditions for enduring enchantment in wearable objects of the post-digital age. Through a series of transdisciplinary collaborations, this research has developed theory objects that explore the holistic encoding of value in wearable technology through data, materiality, aesthetics and personalisation.</p>