Jaeger Lecoultre
When the interface is the object · Best of Web Innovation Award
timeframe
3 months
tools
Miro
category
Strategic Design + Phygital
View it Live
The SIHH — Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie — is the most demanding context in fine watchmaking. Every Maison presents. Every Maison competes for the same finite attention from the same audience of collectors, journalists, and retail partners. In that context, a well-designed stand isn't enough. It's expected.
Jaeger-LeCoultre's challenge wasn't visibility. It was memorability. How do you create an experience that people talk about after leaving the salon? One that makes the collection feel inevitable rather than merely desirable? The brief pointed toward the Maison's deep astral heritage. The solution had to live there — not as decoration, but as the structural logic of the entire experience.
Two interconnected experience layers, both rooted in the Maison's astral universe.
A VR telescope experience for immersive collection discovery. An AR try-on device — the first of its kind in fine watchmaking — giving collectors the physical reference of a timepiece on the wrist without requiring a sales associate.
Both experiences shared one design principle: the technology belongs to the Maison's world, or it doesn't exist. Best of Web Innovation Award.
2
experience layers · VR + AR
1st
AR try-on in watchmaking
1
Best of Web · Innovation Award
SIHH
live international event
How
The wrong question in experiential design
Most phygital activations start with the wrong question: what technology should we use?
The right question is: what does this feel like? If you can't answer that with a single sentence before touching a tool or a budget, you're not ready to design anything. The technology is a consequence of the experience intention — not its source.
For Jaeger-LeCoultre at SIHH, the experience intention was precise: give collectors the feeling of discovering the collection the way the Maison's founders discovered the sky — through an instrument, with patience, with wonder. That sentence determined everything. The telescope wasn't chosen because VR was interesting. It was chosen because it was the only physical interface that carried the right metaphorical weight for a Maison built on astronomical precision.
Designing for collectors, not users
The research phase for a SIHH activation isn't a standard UX process. You're not studying behaviour over weeks of sessions. You have a fixed event, a fixed audience, and a fixed environment. What research does here is map the emotional journey of a collector encountering a collection for the first time — and identify the moments where an experience can shift from appreciation to desire.
The key insight was structural: collectors at SIHH are not passive. They arrive with opinions, knowledge, and strong references. An experience that presents to them fails. One that invites them to explore — at their own pace, on their own terms — succeeds.
This distinction drove every architecture decision. The telescope experience was self-directed: no guided tour, no prescribed sequence. Collectors chose their own path through the constellation universe. The "On Your Wrist" AR device was equally autonomous: no sales associate required, no pressure, no performance. Just the collector and the timepiece, with the technology invisible between them.
The AR standard we set
Fine watchmaking has a fundamental demonstration challenge. A watch on a display cushion and a watch on a wrist are completely different objects. Scale, proportion, light behaviour, the relationship between the case and the hand — none of it translates without the wrist.
The "On Your Wrist" experience solved this with deliberate simplicity: a paper bracelet and a tablet. Not because we couldn't build something more sophisticated — but because sophistication was the wrong goal. The goal was friction removal. The paper bracelet took three seconds to put on. The recognition was instant. The experience was immediate.
The design constraint that governed every decision: does this feel like it belongs in a Jaeger-LeCoultre space, or does it feel imported from somewhere else? A timepiece that has taken years to craft deserves an AR experience that feels equally considered. We weren't building a demo. We were extending the Maison's world into a new dimension.
It was the first AR try-on ever produced in fine watchmaking. The standard we set wasn't technical sophistication. It was experiential coherence.
Jaeger Lecoultre
When the interface is the object · Best of Web Innovation Award
timeframe
3 months
tools
Miro
category
Strategic Design + Phygital
View it Live
The SIHH — Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie — is the most demanding context in fine watchmaking. Every Maison presents. Every Maison competes for the same finite attention from the same audience of collectors, journalists, and retail partners. In that context, a well-designed stand isn't enough. It's expected.
Jaeger-LeCoultre's challenge wasn't visibility. It was memorability. How do you create an experience that people talk about after leaving the salon? One that makes the collection feel inevitable rather than merely desirable? The brief pointed toward the Maison's deep astral heritage. The solution had to live there — not as decoration, but as the structural logic of the entire experience.
Two interconnected experience layers, both rooted in the Maison's astral universe.
A VR telescope experience for immersive collection discovery. An AR try-on device — the first of its kind in fine watchmaking — giving collectors the physical reference of a timepiece on the wrist without requiring a sales associate.
Both experiences shared one design principle: the technology belongs to the Maison's world, or it doesn't exist. Best of Web Innovation Award.
2
experience layers · VR + AR
1st
AR try-on in watchmaking
1
Best of Web · Innovation Award
SIHH
live international event
How
The wrong question in experiential design
Most phygital activations start with the wrong question: what technology should we use?
The right question is: what does this feel like? If you can't answer that with a single sentence before touching a tool or a budget, you're not ready to design anything. The technology is a consequence of the experience intention — not its source.
For Jaeger-LeCoultre at SIHH, the experience intention was precise: give collectors the feeling of discovering the collection the way the Maison's founders discovered the sky — through an instrument, with patience, with wonder. That sentence determined everything. The telescope wasn't chosen because VR was interesting. It was chosen because it was the only physical interface that carried the right metaphorical weight for a Maison built on astronomical precision.
Designing for collectors, not users
The research phase for a SIHH activation isn't a standard UX process. You're not studying behaviour over weeks of sessions. You have a fixed event, a fixed audience, and a fixed environment. What research does here is map the emotional journey of a collector encountering a collection for the first time — and identify the moments where an experience can shift from appreciation to desire.
The key insight was structural: collectors at SIHH are not passive. They arrive with opinions, knowledge, and strong references. An experience that presents to them fails. One that invites them to explore — at their own pace, on their own terms — succeeds.
This distinction drove every architecture decision. The telescope experience was self-directed: no guided tour, no prescribed sequence. Collectors chose their own path through the constellation universe. The "On Your Wrist" AR device was equally autonomous: no sales associate required, no pressure, no performance. Just the collector and the timepiece, with the technology invisible between them.
The AR standard we set
Fine watchmaking has a fundamental demonstration challenge. A watch on a display cushion and a watch on a wrist are completely different objects. Scale, proportion, light behaviour, the relationship between the case and the hand — none of it translates without the wrist.
The "On Your Wrist" experience solved this with deliberate simplicity: a paper bracelet and a tablet. Not because we couldn't build something more sophisticated — but because sophistication was the wrong goal. The goal was friction removal. The paper bracelet took three seconds to put on. The recognition was instant. The experience was immediate.
The design constraint that governed every decision: does this feel like it belongs in a Jaeger-LeCoultre space, or does it feel imported from somewhere else? A timepiece that has taken years to craft deserves an AR experience that feels equally considered. We weren't building a demo. We were extending the Maison's world into a new dimension.
It was the first AR try-on ever produced in fine watchmaking. The standard we set wasn't technical sophistication. It was experiential coherence.
Jaeger Lecoultre
When the interface is the object · Best of Web Innovation Award
timeframe
3 months
tools
Miro
category
Strategic Design + Phygital
View it Live
The SIHH — Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie — is the most demanding context in fine watchmaking. Every Maison presents. Every Maison competes for the same finite attention from the same audience of collectors, journalists, and retail partners. In that context, a well-designed stand isn't enough. It's expected.
Jaeger-LeCoultre's challenge wasn't visibility. It was memorability. How do you create an experience that people talk about after leaving the salon? One that makes the collection feel inevitable rather than merely desirable? The brief pointed toward the Maison's deep astral heritage. The solution had to live there — not as decoration, but as the structural logic of the entire experience.
Two interconnected experience layers, both rooted in the Maison's astral universe.
A VR telescope experience for immersive collection discovery. An AR try-on device — the first of its kind in fine watchmaking — giving collectors the physical reference of a timepiece on the wrist without requiring a sales associate.
Both experiences shared one design principle: the technology belongs to the Maison's world, or it doesn't exist. Best of Web Innovation Award.
2
experience layers · VR + AR
1st
AR try-on in watchmaking
1
Best of Web · Innovation Award
SIHH
live international event
How
The wrong question in experiential design
Most phygital activations start with the wrong question: what technology should we use?
The right question is: what does this feel like? If you can't answer that with a single sentence before touching a tool or a budget, you're not ready to design anything. The technology is a consequence of the experience intention — not its source.
For Jaeger-LeCoultre at SIHH, the experience intention was precise: give collectors the feeling of discovering the collection the way the Maison's founders discovered the sky — through an instrument, with patience, with wonder. That sentence determined everything. The telescope wasn't chosen because VR was interesting. It was chosen because it was the only physical interface that carried the right metaphorical weight for a Maison built on astronomical precision.
Designing for collectors, not users
The research phase for a SIHH activation isn't a standard UX process. You're not studying behaviour over weeks of sessions. You have a fixed event, a fixed audience, and a fixed environment. What research does here is map the emotional journey of a collector encountering a collection for the first time — and identify the moments where an experience can shift from appreciation to desire.
The key insight was structural: collectors at SIHH are not passive. They arrive with opinions, knowledge, and strong references. An experience that presents to them fails. One that invites them to explore — at their own pace, on their own terms — succeeds.
This distinction drove every architecture decision. The telescope experience was self-directed: no guided tour, no prescribed sequence. Collectors chose their own path through the constellation universe. The "On Your Wrist" AR device was equally autonomous: no sales associate required, no pressure, no performance. Just the collector and the timepiece, with the technology invisible between them.
The AR standard we set
Fine watchmaking has a fundamental demonstration challenge. A watch on a display cushion and a watch on a wrist are completely different objects. Scale, proportion, light behaviour, the relationship between the case and the hand — none of it translates without the wrist.
The "On Your Wrist" experience solved this with deliberate simplicity: a paper bracelet and a tablet. Not because we couldn't build something more sophisticated — but because sophistication was the wrong goal. The goal was friction removal. The paper bracelet took three seconds to put on. The recognition was instant. The experience was immediate.
The design constraint that governed every decision: does this feel like it belongs in a Jaeger-LeCoultre space, or does it feel imported from somewhere else? A timepiece that has taken years to craft deserves an AR experience that feels equally considered. We weren't building a demo. We were extending the Maison's world into a new dimension.
It was the first AR try-on ever produced in fine watchmaking. The standard we set wasn't technical sophistication. It was experiential coherence.