What happens when someone using a new technology finds it to be so enticing that they feel compelled to indulge to an excessive degree, disrupting their lives and fracturing relationships?

Design For the Computer Obsessive, a project by Joe Malia graduating student in Interaction Design at the Royal College of Art in London, centers on the role design can play in guiding these individuals through their turbulent affair with the technology.

For example, Private Public is a series of objects that highlight the privacy we sacrifice when using mobile technological devices in public spaces.

By wearing the mobile phone scarf, you can venture into public spaces confident that if the need to compose a private text message were to arise the object could be pulled over the face to create an isolated environment.

Meanwhile, devoted PSP players can explore their passion in complete privacy (though i can’t garantee they’ll be unnoticed) by using a similar model specifically designed for the gaming console.

See also: Crispin Jones’s Electrophile, Christain Palino’s Peripheral Needs.