Smart materials experience room

Interacting with artefacts allows the reception of information through the senses that, combined with personal perception, evolves into the so-called experiential knowledge. In this perspective product designers have a huge responsibility in managing the experience of the final user with products. Before defining a concept, it can be useful to let designers interact with materials (conventional and smart) in order to improve the end user’s experiential knowledge. The aim of the project is to investigate how a direct experience with materials can be translated into quick concepts. Thus, it has been designed a multisensory space to let designer directly translate their impressions into sketches, improving material selection by having a first-hand approach on materials expression analysis.