SOTO
Fashion-first AI hardware built around sound, intentional interaction, and privacy.
DURATION
3-week concept sprint
ROLE
Product & Brand Designer
SKILLS
Strategy, Identity, UX/UI, Motion
PROTOTYPE
TEAM
Solo - Dane Kowachek
AI is leaving the screen.
As artificial intelligence moves into physical products, devices are gaining more awareness of the people and environments around them. But greater context often comes with greater observation. Cameras, microphones, and passive sensing introduce a fundamental question: how much should intelligent products be allowed to perceive?
This concept explores an alternative direction for wearable AI as an audio-first product intentionally designed without a camera.
The Challenge
Can AI become more present without becoming more invasive?
Wearability
Technology is increasingly worn on the body, yet most devices still communicate function before personal expression.
Attention
AI promises convenience but often creates another interface competing for attention.
Trust
A device capable of understanding its surroundings must make it obvious when and why it is listening.
Product Principles
5 principles guided every decision
01
No camera
The product intentionally excludes visual capture.
02
Intentional listening
Environmental context requires explicit user activation.
03
Visible states
AI activity should never be ambiguous.
04
Fashion first
The object should work as an accessory as much as a device.
05
Less screen time
The interface exists primarily through sound, touch, and voice.
Opportunity
Designing AI around something we already wear.
Wireless headphones already sit at an unusually intimate intersection of communication, music, movement, and everyday life. Instead of introducing another category of device, the concept builds intelligence into an interaction people already understand: listening. The result is an AI wearable that exists primarily through sound.
Smartphones
Powerful, but screen-dependent.
Wireless headphones
Natural audio interface, limited intelligence.
Smart glasses
Contextually powerful, raises visual privacy concerns.
SOTTO
Audio-first intelligence, camera-free by design.
Product
An intelligent audio object designed to be worn.
The modular device combines audio, voice interaction, and physical controls in a form influenced by jewelry and fashion accessories. Rather than hiding intelligence behind a screen, the hardware communicates state through touch, material movement, light, and sound.
Interaction
Listening should be intentional
Tap
Media and basic controls.
Press + hold
Temporarily activates and allows AI to understand environmental audio.
Press + hold again
Contextual listening stops.
This turns privacy from a buried software setting into a physical interaction.
Conversation Mode
What happens when AI needs to hear more than its owner?
Audio presents its own ethical problems. Conversation mode requires the wearable to be removed and placed visibly in the space. A clear physical state — a visible illuminated ring — indicates that AI is active, making the interaction observable to the people around it.
The concept doesn’t assume that audio capture is ethically neutral. Instead, it explores how industrial and interaction design might make AI listening more intentional, visible, and understandable.
Experience
Ask
“What’s my first meeting today?”
Remember
“Remember this idea for the campaign.”
Translate
Understand language through real-time audio.
Listen
“Explain what he just meant.”
Respond
Summarize and answer messages without a screen.
Identity
Rather than using familiar AI imagery, the identity translates properties of sound into a flexible graphic system. Frequency, rhythm, interference, silence, and distortion influence typography, imagery, and motion.
Digital Product
Although most interactions happen through the wearable, the companion application gives users direct visibility into how the AI behaves. Users can manage:
Memory
Listening history
Data deletion
Interruptions
Languages
Privacy
Prototyping
From interface concept to working prototype.
Rather than stopping at static screens, I used Claude to develop an interactive prototype of the companion experience, focused on three core journeys: onboarding, memory management, and privacy and listening history. This allowed interaction decisions to be tested rather than only presented.
Outcome
This is a speculative concept, so no business metrics are claimed. Instead, the project became an exploration of how brand, industrial design, and UX can work together to address one of the central questions emerging around AI hardware: not simply what technology can perceive, but what it should.
Deliverables
Brand strategy & positioning
Visual identity
Concept hardware
Interaction design
Campaign & launch website
Companion experience prototype
Motion
Case study
