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Snowflakes: A Prototyping Tool for Computational Jewelry

Published: 07 May 2021 Publication History

Abstract

Smart-jewelry design has many layers such as comfort, ergonomics, fashionability, interactivity and functionality that create a complex design process, making the form exploration challenging. Various wearable prototyping tools were developed to overcome this challenge; however, they are usually textile-based and do not target smart jewelry design. To bridge this gap, we developed Snowflakes that differentiates from existing tools by 1) allowing designers to explore different jewelry forms, 2) incorporating external materials such as leather, 3) creating form factors that fit body parts with flexible connectors. In this paper, we explain the design process of Snowflakes which is inspired by 7 design parameters (limbs, materials, grip, fastener, decoration, placement, form) extracted through the examination of non-smart jewelry. We also demonstrate three reimplementations and design concepts implemented with Snowflakes. Our exploration with Snowflakes contributes to the wearable community in terms of smart-jewelry visual expressions, interaction modalities, and merger of traditional and computational materials.

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      cover image ACM Conferences
      CHI '21: Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
      May 2021
      10862 pages
      ISBN:9781450380966
      DOI:10.1145/3411764
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      Published: 07 May 2021

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      Author Tags

      1. computational materials
      2. design research
      3. development
      4. fabrication
      5. maker
      6. prototyping
      7. research through design
      8. smart jewellery
      9. wearable technology

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      • (2025)GestEarrings: Developing Gesture-Based Input Techniques for Earrings2025 IEEE/SICE International Symposium on System Integration (SII)10.1109/SII59315.2025.10871112(897-904)Online publication date: 21-Jan-2025
      • (2024)The Development and (Mis)appropriation of a Digital Kit for JewellersACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction10.1145/3702316Online publication date: 4-Nov-2024
      • (2024)Wearability Factors for Body-Worn Colorimetric BiosensorsCompanion of the 2024 on ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing10.1145/3675094.3678486(944-951)Online publication date: 5-Oct-2024
      • (2024)ECSkin: Tessellating Electrochromic Films for Reconfigurable On-skin DisplaysProceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies10.1145/36596138:2(1-26)Online publication date: 15-May-2024
      • (2024)LeatherBoard: Sustainable On-body Rapid Prototyping with Leather Scraps and Machine EmbroideryExtended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613905.3650894(1-7)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
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      • (2023)Composing Music Through Tile-based Games2023 IEEE International Symposium on Multimedia (ISM)10.1109/ISM59092.2023.00059(309-314)Online publication date: 11-Dec-2023
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