Materials Experience: Contemporary Issues in Materials and Product Design

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.

Elvin Karana is Professor of Materials Innovation and Design in the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering at Delft University of Technology. Giving emphasis to materials’ role in design as experiential and yet deeply rooted in their inherent properties, Elvin explores and navigates the productive shifts between materials science and design for materials and product development in synergy. In 2015, she founded the cross-country research group Materials Experience Lab, which she leads jointly with Valentina Rognoli. Elvin has over 70 scientific publications in peer-reviewed journals and conferences. Her recent book Still Alive (2020) brings to the attention a new and exciting design space, where she proposes that by discovering ways to maintain an organism’s aliveness as a tangible manifestation of a biodesign process, livingness will become a persistent material quality in design. In 2019, she founded the biodesign research lab Material Incubator ([MI] Lab) that invites designers to harness the potential of living organisms for unique functionalities, interactions, and expressions in the everyday. Material Incubator brings together researchers and practitioners from Avans University of Applied Sciences and Delft University of Technology.

Owain Pedgley is Professor of Industrial Design at Middle East Technical University, Ankara. His expertise is in design for interaction and user experiences, with specialization in two areas of application: materials and materialization, and musical instrument design and innovation. He has published widely in these areas and coordinates projects as a researcher, thesis supervisor, and instructor. Owain is a strong advocate of research through design (RtD), having championed this approach to academic studies for over 20 years through publications and supervisions, traced back to early adoption of RtD in his own PhD (1999). He is a member of the Editorial Board of Design Studies and an Associate Editor of She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics and Innovation. He is also an Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Engineering at the University of Liverpool, having served as a founding member of its Industrial Design BEng/MEng programs (2014-17). Prior to commencing his academic career, Owain worked as a product designer in the sports equipment and musical instrument sectors, co-founding the polymer acoustic guitar innovation venture “Cool Acoustics.”

Valentina Rognoli is Associate Professor in the Design Department at Politecnico di Milano. She is a pioneer in the field of materials experience, starting almost 20 years ago and has established internationally recognized expertise on the topic in both research and education. Her mission is raising sensibility and making professional designers and future designers conscious of the infinite potential of materials and processes. The investigations of her research group focus on pioneering and challenging topics including DIY-Materials for social innovation and sustainability; bio and circular materials; urban materials and materials from waste and food waste; materials for interactions and IoT (ICS Materials); speculative materials; tinkering with materials; materials-driven design method; CMF design; emerging materials’ experiences; and material education in the field of design. Since 2015, Valentina jointly leads, with Elvin Karana, the international research group Materials Experience Lab. She participated as a principal investigator in the European Project Made, co-funded by the Creative Europe Program of The European Union, which aimed to boost talents toward circular economies across Europe. Valentina is the author of over 50 publications. She has organized international workshops and events and has contributed as an invited speaker and reviewer for relevant journals and international conferences.