Materials Experience 2

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

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

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.

This chapter begins by noting the general relationship between modeling and designing. Some mathematical and visual strategies for modeling materials technology are discussed, and, in particular, the manner in which these models enhance the perceptual span of the designer is explored. The capabilities they enhance are identified and the limitations implicit within the models are noted within the increasingly complex context of design agendas. The key requirements concerning materials technology for the purposes of those engaged in designing, or ‘materials technology for design’, are discussed. The implications for design education of these positions are noted and the conclusion reached that, as with designing, modeling materials technology must facilitate the interaction, through all the senses, of the imaging of design concepts in the mind with their external representations.

During the user-product interaction process, tactile feeling of materials plays a vital role. This chapter starts from understanding the essence of texture beyond the visual domain, explores the perception dimensions of material textures via the sense of touch, i.e., geometrical dimension, physical-chemical dimension, emotional dimension and associative dimension. The concept and method of optimum texture design will be discussed, where the correlations between the perception dimensions and the relationships between subjective feelings and underlying physical properties or parameters of materials are brought to attention. To bring the findings of the research into practical application within design projects, a material-aesthetics database has been developed.

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.

Teaching engineering to industrial designers is an exciting challenge. The lengthy, manifold ways to develop competencies in materials within the wide-ranging, eclectic population of designers began at the Politecnico di Milano in 1993, when the first Industrial Design School was founded in Italy. Since the days that iron-carbon diagrams spread panic among freshmen, a great deal of work has been done; today we can proudly observe the birth of many different educational models for teaching materials. This chapter analyzes and classifies four of those models by following their growing complexity: (i) teaching fundamentals of materials engineering and selection criteria to bachelor level classes; (ii) experiencing materials within studios; (iii) the degree in materials and engineering: from know-what to know-why; and (iv) from sense and perception to materials and technology: an inverted perspective for selecting materials. We illustrate basic concepts, teaching tools, and educational goals for each of these different but complementary approaches. Finally, we portray some case histories of the mutual effects between education and research.