Materials Experience

There currently exists an abundance of materials selection advice for designers suited to solving technical product requirements. In contrast, a stark gap can be found in current literature that articulates the very real personal, social, cultural and economic connections between materials and the design of the material world. In Materials Experience: Fundamentals of Materials and Design, thirty-four of the leading academicians and experts, alongside 8 professional designers, have come together for the first time to offer their expertise and insights on a number of topics common to materials and product design. The result is a very readable and varied panorama on the world of materials and product design as it currently stands. Contributions by many of the most prominent materials experts and designers in the field today, with a foreword by Mike Ashby The book is organized into 4 main themes: sustainability, user interaction, technology and selection Between chapters, you will find the results of interviews conducted with internationally known designers These ‘designer perspectives’ will provide a ‘time out’ from the academic articles, with emphasis placed on fascinating insights, product examples and visuals

If you aim to design a particular user experience, the material properties of the object may play a decisive role in being successful. Would the lightweight car door give you the proper impression of a luxury car? And does a perfectly polished doorknob feel natural? Maybe not. Materials can feel artificial, sound reliable, and (can make a product) look ‘cool’, they can be just pleasant to touch or look at, and cause us to experience disgust, admiration or surprise. In this chapter, we will look into these various ways in which materials can be experienced, ranging from the meanings we attribute to them, the aesthetic pleasure we obtain from perceiving them, and the emotions they may evoke in the context of a designed object. The goal of designing an intended (material) experience must be grounded in an understanding of the processes that underlie people’s material experiences more generally.

Materials Experience 2: Expanding Territories of Materials and Design is the follow-up companion to Materials Experience published in 2014. Materials experience as a concept has evolved substantially and is now mobilized to incorporate new ways of thinking and designing. Through all-new peer-reviewed chapters and project write-ups, the book presents critical perspectives on new and emerging relationships between designers, materials, and artifacts. Subtitled Expanding Territories of Materials and Design, the book examines in depth the increased prevalence of material-driven design practices, as well as the changing role of materials themselves, toward active and influential agents within and outside design processes. The book is essential reading for anyone involved in materials and design, containing 11 authoritative chapters and 18 illustrated accounts of contemporary research projects and practices. Presents both the knowledge and understanding of what ‘new and emerging materials’ are, where they come from, and how they can be used effectively in design Looks at how the professional responsibility of material selection is evolving into a more complex and active role of material ‘creation’ and ‘appropriation’ Explores how an elevated sensitivity to materials influence people’s experiences of the designed world

To meet the needs and desires of end users, design teams must select materials in a manner that thoughtfully balances functional and expressive product concerns. For functional concerns, materials information and selection tools of a technical nature, intended for use by engineers, are somewhat reluctantly adopted. For expressive concerns, designers usually rely on personal or company experiences, since no commercially available material selection tools exist. This chapter elaborates on the need to provide design teams – and industrial designers specifically – with improved materials selection tools, within the general remit of designing for product experience. Central to the argumentation is the proposition of what may be termed ‘user-centered materials selection’, for which four prototypical materials selection tools are presented. The chapter concludes that industrial designers should be encouraged to activate a personal material inspiration journey for their projects, prior to adopting any procedural material selection process typical of engineering.

Materials are like words. The more materials you get in touch with, the more solutions you can see and express. In traditional design methodologies for product development materials are often considered at a later stage, resulting in only a few “good” materials being considered defined by the limitations of costs and manufacturing requirements. Bringing materials at the early stage of the design process makes it possible to review a bigger variety of materials and explore its qualities. Exploring materials at the fuzzy front end has the character of an ongoing research in understanding the available materials and processes that surround us. Besides the potential to inspire designers with unexpected materials-driven solutions, exploring materials can be an effective tool for business to make more strategic use of materials for future products. This article focuses on the use of materials to inspire ideas (instead of realizing ideas) to make design more creative, more sustainable and more competitive.

Materials play an important role in the sensory experience of products. The visual impression (color, gloss, pattern), tactual feeling (warmth, texture, weight), the sound (acoustical properties), smell and – when relevant - taste all depend on the material. Each material has a set of inherent material properties that affect a user's experience. Even though the senses are usually employed simultaneously, visual experience is prominent in material experience, partly because it is often the first modality to observe material characteristics. Nevertheless, the sensitivity for the other senses should not be neglected. Whereas vision provides users with the first impressions, the specific characteristics perceived through other modalities help in shaping the overall experience. The multisensory experience of warmth is used as an example to illustrate the individual impacts related to the use of different sensory modalities and to discuss how the senses work together in creating experiences that are coherent or involve incongruities.

Products are the result of the delicate touch of a craftsperson or demonstrate how a designer has mastered highly mechanized production. There is an opportunity for new material experiences to be explored and defined. Designers can lead this process, combining the technical and emotional aspects of material development, to create richer, more meaningful and future relevant product experiences. This chapter will explore some of the most exciting collisions between design, engineering and material science, whereby the practical and creative aspects of material development are in sync. Nature has been a role model throughout generations of materials development. With advancing technology, it is possible to interact with environments and contexts in new and unexpected ways, redefining our notion of what is manmade.

Here we discuss multidisciplinary work on a sensoaesthetic theory of materials, studying and unraveling the interconnected nature of how we perceive the sensorial aspects of materials in relation to core physical properties. We consider the definition of material from scientific and artistic perspectives, and describe how experiments undertaken by a multidisciplinary team within the Institute of Making worked to draw these sides together in a coherent and productive fashion. The relationship between the objects created for studying the sound and taste of materials, and how their physical properties affect aesthetic perception of the objects, will be introduced as an innovative methodology for investigating material–user interactions.