Digital jewelry and virtual exhibition: interaction in the metaverse

The paper describes the experience of the Utopia: Jewelry Beyond the Body workshop held at Politecnico di Milano in the context of higher academic training which had as its object an innovative design methodology for future creatives. It aimed at testing the design process for creating a jewelry collection specifically designed to have an autonomous life in the digital context. In particular, the paper focuses on the virtual exhibition created in Spatial.io to present students' final virtual projects. First of all, the reference context is described. In fact, the field of jewelry and fashion has progressively been digitized and the interactions between objects and customers that once took place in real life are now dematerialized and moved into the virtual environment. For this reason, the need to experiment with the digital uses of digital products and test digital co-creation spaces is highlighted. Secondly, the methodology used in the workshop will be presented, with a particular focus on the realization of the virtual exhibition. Finally, the experience will be described in detail, presenting quantitative and qualitative results and offering a critical understanding for future research.