Description
What happens when technology leaves the screen and moves closer to the body?
In the course "User-Centred Product Design", students of Industrial Design Engineering explored this question over the course of a semester. The result is a series of independent wearable concepts that work without a dominant screen and instead communicate with their users through vibration, light, sound, or body movement.
The task
Design a body-worn system with a clearly defined benefit. Interaction should take place through gestures, voice, skin contact, or body posture — not through swiping and tapping. Three qualities were central to the design process: How does the product feel on the body? How intuitive is the interaction without a display? And how can the product be repaired, disassembled, or returned to a new material cycle at the end of its life?
The projects
The range of designs shows how diverse body-worn technology can be:
A medical earbud designed to predict epileptic seizures before they occur — discreet, modular, and designed not to look like a medical device, but like a familiar everyday object.
A neurofeedback pair of glasses that helps people with attention deficit train their concentration in a tangible way — through the gradual dimming of the lenses as direct feedback on their own brain activity.
An upper-arm band for ultra-endurance athletes that measures glucose, hydration, and electrolytes in real time and uses a few LEDs to indicate when it is time to drink or eat — without an app and without distraction.
An intelligent knee brace for skiing that detects critical joint movements and warns the wearer through vibration before an injury occurs.
A compact wearable pin that helps older people store memories by voice — without a smartphone, without menu structures, and with just one single button.
A breathing monitoring system for newborns, consisting of a wrap vest and a bear-shaped feedback module that alerts parents without disturbing the baby.
And a smart band for people with panic disorder that uses pulse and sweat measurements to provide early warnings and, in acute situations, guides the wearer toward a calming breathing rhythm through rhythmic light.
Eco-design: From product to cycle
This semester, sustainability was not an additional task, but a core design premise. All projects were developed according to the principles of circular design: How can a product be constructed so that it remains repairable? How can wear parts such as batteries be replaced without special tools? How can materials be separated by type at the end of the product’s life?
The students carried out life cycle assessments, calculated carbon footprints, and compared their designs with conventional products. The results show that environmental impacts per year of use can be drastically reduced through a consistently modular structure, the avoidance of adhesives, screwed housings, and the deliberate omission of energy- and resource-intensive components such as high-resolution displays. Some concepts go even further and include service models in which products are not purchased, but borrowed, maintained, and passed on to new users.
Who are the projects for?
The projects deliberately address user groups that are often overlooked in the mainstream technology market: older people who struggle with the complexity of smartphones; children and premature babies, whose bodies place particular demands on fit and safety; people with chronic conditions such as epilepsy, ADHD, or panic disorder, who want support without being marked as ill; and athletes whose bodies are exposed to extreme physical strain.
What you see here
The exhibition presents concept banners, prototypes, and visualisations — the entire path from problem to idea to tangible design. The projects are not finished products, but well-founded concepts at the level of an advanced design project. They show how design can operate at the intersection of human needs, technology, and responsibility — and that good design begins where one understands the person one is designing for.
