Turning to stone: Jewellery puts wearers back in control of digital demands

Kovert Designs claims that ALTRUIS, the latest addition to the ever-growing wearable technology market, offers a cure for what it calls notification nausea.

Inspired by the clean lines of post-World War II Scandinavian design, Kovert Designs’ Cleopatra collection of rings, bracelets and necklaces features the ALTRUIS Stone ‘made of premium Zirconia Ceramics, the most gemologically and economically close competitor to diamond’.

The technology behind the collection is incorporated in the stone, including an electric circuit board, rechargeable battery, vibration motor and Bluetooth. Each device will only alert you to notifications of messages from certain pre-selected individuals or keywords that users pre-program in via the app.

Speaking to LS:N Global, Kovert founder and CEO Kate Unsworth said she designed the product to combat today’s culture of hyper-connectedness while still being open to important or urgent contact: ‘ALTRUIS empowers me to take a step away from my smartphone so I can really engage with what’s going on around me. It’s so easy to be sucked into the cyber-sphere and lose sight of what is really important in life. The digital-physical balance is a daily struggle that most of the modern world encounters.’

ALTRUIS is another example of the growing consumer demand to monitor technology usage and, at times, to completely switch off. For more, see our microtrend on JOMO, the Joy of Missing Out.