Enhancement technologies play a growing role in today's socio-cultural context, but the discourse surrounding them is mostly focused on normative frameworks or on speculation about future technologies. The goal of this research is both to redefine enhancements from an individual perspective and to build wearable augmentation systems based on modern-day technologies. I propose sensory layering as a pragmatic method for designing wearable enhancement systems.

I am investigating this proposition through three projects, specifically located in the field of navigation tasks. Two projects discuss the layering of new sensory receptors on a human wearer, i.e., magnetoreception and digital audio cues played in a mixed reality environment. The third project focuses on layering sensors on a mobile robotic platform initially fitted with simple navigation sensors.

This research is practice-led, or, in other words, it is concerned with the development of operational knowledge on the matter of enhancement technologies. Design practice is therefore an integral part of the methodology. Knowledge is in action here (Schön, 1983): the designer/researcher engages in a reflective dialogue with the particular issue of enhancement technologies and creates new knowledge by identifying the problem – the process of redefining the scope of the matter at hand, its outcomes and the means to achieve them. Sensory layering as a method is contextualised in the practice of cybernetics and, in particular, Ashby's Theory of Adaptation and the Law of Requisite Variety.

Cybernetics feedback loops in wearable systems

Two of the wearable systems I'm developing: a haptic navigation assistant and a hybrid bone and soft tissue conduction headset