Federico Casalegno has been excited about ears. Billions of ears. “Ears are nearly like fingerprints. Each one in all us has a special one,” says Casalegno, govt vice chairman of design at Samsung.
It’s a pertinent subject for Samsung, maker of a wide range of earbuds, and for Casalegno, who’s in control of determining learn how to make these earbuds—together with a deep portfolio of wearable know-how merchandise like smartwatches and good rings—as snug and helpful as potential.
Wrapping one’s head round billions of ears—or wrists or fingers or, certainly, entire heads—is a tough prospect, but in addition an more and more necessary a part of Samsung’s enterprise, which introduced in greater than $215 million in revenue in 2025. That’s why Casalegno has led Samsung’s designers and product builders to completely embrace the problem-solving scale of computational design. Utilizing the ability of machine studying, digital modeling, and a deep pool of knowledge, Casalegno helps Samsung reinvent the way it designs its merchandise to raised meet the wants of an more and more numerous international market.
This strategy has elevated the pace at which Samsung can evolve its wearable merchandise. Casalegno says that not a few years in the past the corporate, like every other main product maker, was restricted by standard design instruments and laptop fashions. For one thing like an earbud, translating the biomorphological information of a big group of customers right into a design may need taken a whole month to mannequin. Now a type of simulations can take 10 minutes.
“We actually run 1000’s of simulations in a really brief time period, and we’ve hundreds of thousands of knowledge factors, which was inconceivable earlier than,” Casalegno says. All of it provides as much as quicker product improvement timelines, and better product variety. “Computational design, 100%, helps to enhance our product portfolio as was by no means potential earlier than, however on the identical time it’s making new alternatives to create new merchandise,” he says.
As a pioneer in computational design, Casalegno brings greater than 25 years of expertise he honed over a protracted tenure on the MIT Media Lab, and, since 2018, as one of many prime designers inside Samsung. On prime of being a seasoned designer, he additionally has a PhD in sociology.
After taking up as head of Samsung’s international design studios final November, Casalegno made computational design a central tenet of the corporate’s product improvement technique. He additionally sees it as a method to make merchandise like Samsung’s wearables extra, effectively, wearable. “I’ve at all times been pushed by designing for people and bringing ahead this human-centered design strategy,” he says.
Even for one thing as seemingly easy as an earbud, wearability is a sophisticated objective to goal for. Casalegno says computational design has allowed his group to mix superior computing, machine studying, and AI to design earbuds that match higher and have extra exactly positioned sensors. Moreover, it allows them to make data-driven choices about how designs must be adjusted to satisfy the real-world calls for of customers.
Casalegno says the brand new product improvement course of entails gathering a big set of 3D information on human ears—the fingerprints of the pinnacle—and creating digital twins for each. “This enables us to work with a set of knowledge that’s uniquely curated, that’s exact, and this helps us to design accordingly for various demographics.”
Then, utilizing digital fashions of recent earbud designs, the group simulates how these earbuds match inside many otherwise sized ears. The designs are adjusted to make them match higher and extra comfortably in as many digital ears as potential. In contrast with earlier improvement paths, when merchandise might solely be examined within the ears of a small group of check topics, this strategy allows the designers to regulate their designs to serve a a lot wider vary of customers.
Subsequent, the merchandise transfer into the bodily realm. Casalegno says Samsung has been utilizing 3D-printed earbuds and ear fashions to test the bodily match. (It’s additionally utilizing 3D printing to optimize the situation of sensors on merchandise like smartwatches.) They’re put by way of rigorous testing utilizing robots, checking to see how effectively an earbud stays inside an ear throughout motion like strolling, working, and leaping. Prototype variations are additionally examined with actual individuals. Knowledge collected throughout this testing is then fed again into the design.
“After which we in a short time iterate and create quite a lot of design variations utilizing AI and our instruments to enhance the product’s efficiency,” Casalegno says.
As new merchandise like the newest model of Samsung’s Galaxy Buds come out later this 12 months, Casalegno says shoppers will begin to expertise among the affect this computational design strategy is having, even when the adjustments are on the sub-millimeter scale. “You’ll really feel the impact of how computational design helps our product improvement,” he says. “As a result of on the finish of the day, they really feel extra snug and also you hear higher.”
