EntoPedia is a wearable product design that rethinks how people interact with the natural world. Designed by Junfei Teng and recognized as a Gold Winner at the French Design Awards 2026, it turns everyday insect encounters into documented digital specimens — no net, no jar, no harm.

The device is worn as a magnetic pendant. Its body sits on a clean necklace wire, and the form is deliberately understated. There are no bulky sensors or exposed electronics visible from the outside. The housing uses a forest-green, diamond-quilted surface texture that reads more like a fashion accessory than a scientific instrument. That choice matters — it means someone can wear it to school, on a walk, or to a park without it announcing itself as gear.

Wearable Product Design That Deploys on Contact

The interaction model is direct and physical. When an insect is spotted, a two-finger press on dual-sided capture-release buttons mechanically deploys the camera module. The imaging unit swings out from the pendant body and enters recording mode immediately. There is no app to open first, no menu to navigate. The friction between noticing and documenting is reduced to a single gesture.

Built-in illumination supports documentation in low-light and outdoor conditions. The camera records each insect as a unique digital specimen, pairing the visual record with contextual metadata: time, GPS location, and environmental context. This data is not siloed — it feeds into a shared local dataset that all EntoPedia users contribute to collectively.

The companion app carries the project's visual identity cleanly. The interface uses the same forest-green palette as the hardware. A "Trending Insects" screen displays species cards — Mantis, Butterfly, Dragonfly, Beetle — each tagged with habitat and seasonal appearance data such as "Meadow, Spring–Summer." A separate "Nearby" map view renders recent insect sightings as circular photo thumbnails pinned to a street-level map, giving users a live picture of what is active in their local area right now.

Discovery has a cumulative layer built in. When a user documents an insect species not previously recorded in a specific location — say, the first sighting of a particular butterfly in a neighborhood — that record is flagged as a first observation. Later records of the same species in the same area retain a visible reference back to that original find. Early observers are acknowledged by the system. Knowledge is shown to be built over time, not handed down from authority.

The wearable product design discipline often struggles with the question of purpose: what does a wearable actually do that a phone cannot? EntoPedia answers this with a specific use case and a specific physical constraint. A phone requires two hands, a deliberate pause, and a camera app. This pendant requires one gesture, stays on the body, and disappears into personal style when not in use. The result is a device that changes the relationship between the wearer and their environment — not by adding a screen, but by lowering the cost of paying attention.

Junfei Teng's approach positions the user not as a collector but as a contributor. Possession is replaced by documentation. The specimen is a record, not a trophy. For a generation of designers thinking about how objects can promote ecological awareness without preaching, EntoPedia is a clear-eyed model of how form, interaction, and data can work together at a human scale.