A Practice-based Investigation of Digital Jewellery Design That Captures and Visualises Dynamic Emotive States

In this research, the researcher explores digital materials within digital jewellery by investigating jewellery's potential for expressing identity and emotion and reflecting the wearer’s dynamic emotive states. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach embedded in practice-based research, the researcher employed a research through design approach. Through contextual reviews and interviews, the researcher defined the concept of digital identity within a jewellery context, reviewed relevant literature on emotional states, and obtained valuable information and guidance to inform practice. Subsequently, through an in-depth jewellery prototyping practice, four digital jewellery prototypes were developed to interpret dynamic emotive states by integrating digital hardware with jewellery hand-making techniques and embedding interactive software. This practical exploration has been thoroughly documented, visually and textually, within this thesis and the portfolio appendix. Results of this practice indicate that interactions between wearers and digital jewellery prototypes, involving the collection and visualisation of dynamic emotive data through innovative methods, show the potential for digital jewellery as a medium to reflect emotive states. Additionally, a concept was proposed wherein digital jewellery is considered ‘complete’ only when the digital display is activated, thus embodying the notion of ‘digital as material’. By combining dynamic digital displays with hand-making jewellery, this practice-based research provides initial validation that jewellery can dynamically express emotional states, and detailed documentation of the process and reflection enhances its value as an interdisciplinary case study. However, notable limitations emerged during this research, including reliance on a limited network of interviewees, the researcher-focused abstraction of biometric data as well as colour and shapes choices to inform visual design, and limited exploration of jewellery wearability and placement. Based on these limitations, several avenues for future development are proposed, including adopting user-centred design methods, modular and adaptive jewellery designs, broadening interdisciplinary collaboration through more extensive interviews to enhance theoretical depth and potential opportunities, integrating established theoretical frameworks such as colour psychology to enhance emotional resonance and practicality, and systematically investigating jewellery wearability and positioning.