What is the Point? Assessing Emotional Engagement with Interactive Jewellery Using the POINT Framework.

The use of a familiar object (jewellery) to access creative onscreen content has the potential to engage new audiences and create new insights and experiences at the interface between artefacts and multimedia applications. This paper discusses a research project which uses a hybrid of craft, visual art and human factors methods to investigate emotional responses to interaction with screen-based content using jewellery as a tangible interface. Jewellery has been the focus of technological research as a carrier of ubiquitous computing by non-jewellery specialists, but the use and adaptation of existing forms of jewellery tends to ignore the rich potential within the jewellery object as a carrier of multilayered meaning: the aesthetics of the artefact and the emotional quality of the interaction are often secondary considerations to the efficacy of technology. On the other hand, within Contemporary Jewellery, evaluation frameworks as understood within other disciplines, simply do not exist: analysis of objects and their reception by wearers is based on implicit knowledge, and subjective assumptions. This research utilises the Point Framework, developed for human factors research in a business environment to investigate users’ emotional responses to interactive jewellery. The researchers, a multimedia artist and a jewellery designer have produced prototypes of both jewellery and onscreen applications to facilitate dialogue between themselves and users/wearers to explore the relationship between engagement and interactivity, between screen and artefact. The resultant multimedia and artefact simulation allow the user to experience surprising and engaging interactions between tangible input and screen output. Findings suggest that using jewellery to initiate and control interaction with multimedia applications can create emotional experiences and new relationships between tangible objects and virtual interactions. The research demonstrates that the distinctive methods inherent in visual art and craft practice can be synthesised with user- centred methodologies to have relevance to contemporary issues outside the traditional concerns and domain of craft and visual art