Filippo Sanzeni

My research aims at bridging the gap between design practice’s speculative approach and the highly technical domain of robotics. To this aim, this research explores the wicked problem of wearable systems designed to enhance the wearer’s embodied understanding of the world. Whereas design practitioners have approached the subject of enhancement technologies, envisioning speculative futures of augmentation, roboticists have developed numerous enhancement systems, thanks to recent technological leaps in miniaturisation and machine learning. While roboticists build enhancement systems yet do not manifest a critical approach to the subject, design practitioners rely on speculative methods without strategically addressing enhancement technologies’ complexity. As a starting point, this research reframes the problem of enhancement technologies through the lens of embodiment and design cybernetics to offer practitioners a set of design principles for approaching the subject from the perspective of sensory layering.

Further, this research reframes enhancement technologies within this field as systems that can sense hidden affordances and deliver them to the wearer through feedback loops layered on its pre-existing sensory contingencies. To direct the practice, I formulate five principles for designing wearable enhancements. I then embody the design principles in three projects, looking at expanding the agent’s sensory systems in their environment. I design contextual wearable systems to enhance the navigation capabilities of human and non-human agents. My research aims at offering a practice-based framework for designers and roboticists for tackling wearable enhancement technologies.