Disobedient Wearables

Project made for

About Design Friction
Design Friction is a design practice working on near-futures scenarios and experimental interactive experiences,

founded by Estelle Hary and Bastien Kerspern.

"Through design, we explore social, cultural and technological transformations of our societies, to deconstruct realities to build new perspectives."
www.design-friction.com
@design_friction

Disobedient Wearables is a critical project exploring unexpected cross-overs between wearable technologies and social issues. Taking wearable technologies as a slow, but inevitable, shift in our life, Disobedient Wearables is a design attempt to anticipate upcoming controversies of the social and cultural impact of these connected pieces strapped to us. The project seeks to feed current debates, considering the questions of data ownership, privacy, persuasive power of connected devices and willing consent to constant connection.

For this project, my good friend Bastien Kerspern asked me to work on the design of two specific products:

• Rectified-Self: a wearable using pain as a way to improve physical performances.
• Data2Debt: a wearable collecting personal data to be sold in order to recover one’s debt.

Like a lot of designers I am currently obsessed by the wearables, whether it be from Withings, Xiaomi or Apple, the market is boiling and new products are showing up every day. Some of them already question me quite a lot, do we really need them all? What exactly are those products tracking and who actually is the product? The hell, they look fantastic !

Thrilled by the idea, I dived in and tried to come up with concepts as spicy as the subject itself.

— Rectified Self

A wearable using pain as a way to improve physical performances.

Moodboards

For this product I wanted to convey a feel of uneasiness, a slight discomfort that wouldn't look like a big deal at first but that would grow relentlessly through the day, like an itch you can't scratch, making it unbearable by the time you are finally allowed to remove the wearable.

Sketches and concept generation

I came up with an elastomer wristband with an abrasive surface on the inside.

The more you try to remove it, the tighter it gets.

Concept development

— Data2Debt

A wearable collecting personal data to be sold in order to recover one’s debt.

Moodboards

For Data2Debt, I wanted to create a beautiful piece of jewelry. Something you could wear as a necklace and be proud of, althought it is actually tracking and collecting every single move you make.

When you look closely at it, you realize there is somekind of hostile entity hidden inside the shell.