During the process from design to delivery of a finished piece of jewelry, everyone visualizes things a bit differently. Many times these differences are not communicated well, and the revisions that result have a high cost in both time and money. Studies in augmented reality (AR) have documented a great potential to not only improve communication among the client, designer and production team, but to enhance the designer's visualization and spatial thinking skills and to aid in catching pre-production errors.

Even in this digital age, there still remains great power in the physical object. Augmented reality lets us hold an object in our hands while it is still in the digital stage, turn it over as a real item, slip a ring on our finger, hold an earring up to our ear—it brings the digital design to life in real-world context. This paper explores the power of seeing a digital object in the real world using augmented reality and how AR can impact the design process, communication and production to save time and money, as well as the current viability of integrating it into a daily work flow.

Author: Annie Koenig