2017 – Wearable Self

Wearable Self is a collection of data jewelry which is Jiyeon Kang's master's thesis project at Parsons School of Design. South Korean designer Jiyeon Kang transformed a year of self-tracking data (e.g. daily steps) gathered by Fitbit and iPhone Health into personalized fashion items that can hold and wear. Through laser cut and 3d printing with different materials, the designer creates customizable fashion items generated by users' self-data, aiming to make self-tracking data more meaningful for individuals who use wearable devices. Where fashion design meets data visualization, Wearable Self creates unique business opportunities in personalized fashion and allows users to interact with their own data while it opens a new conversation related to data ownership and self-identity. "With the maturity of wearable technology, we are all unconsciously gathering activity data from our everyday movement by the sensors on our smartphone and wearable devices. The quantified self, which is a movement to track and quantify every aspect of lives with tracking technologies, has started to go mainstream. However, in many cases, those numbers gathered by fitness trackers often fail to make meaningful connections with us. We might get a better sense of self-awareness by looking at those real-time graphs displayed on data dashboards, but as time passes, it’s obvious that the data streams lose its context. Can those endless streams of self-data, which show traces of our lives, be more memorable beyond data dashboards? In this context, my thesis Wearable Self attempts to turn self-tracking data that belongs to us into art that can be mementos for individuals. I believe that making self-data tangible and wearable opens a business opportunity in terms of personalization and customization in fashion design." (Kang, 2017) Sources: See details on Jiyeon Kang's portfolio. Wearable Self: Your Data Jewelry (project webpage.)