ICS Materiality: the phenomenon of interactive, connected, and smart materials as enablers of new materials experiences

In many areas of our private and social life, digital technologies are emerging with increasing strength and conviction. In the entrepreneurial and productive spheres, companies invest in digitalization following the guidelines of the new policies and riding the ever-increasing wave of financing aimed at new digital technologies. In front of such a promising context and an increasingly insistent demand, even the designers are invited to shape this umpteenth technological revolution. They have the responsibility to interpret this ambition for the miniaturization of information technologies and the diffusion of interdisciplinary environments that fuel cross-fertilization and the merging of previously isolated and distinctive practices. The ongoing direction we are increasingly witnessing is that the artefacts we use and wear in our everyday life are becoming more and more embedded with smartness. Smartness is the quality of an object to adapt to circumstances by reacting to different stimuli. While, at the level of designing interactive objects and systems for tangible interfaces, research and practice are already advanced, instead, at the level of the development and application of materials enabling smartness for purposeful and meaningful interactions, there are still significant progress to be done. Indeed, the actuation of smartness will potentially evolve by instilling it in the matter itself thanks to the miniaturization of technologies, instead then integrating it with interactive technologies. This will allow for seamless results avoiding the obtrusive presence of technology in the users’ everyday life and promoting a more natural and sustainable approach to interactive objects, potentially enhancing novel and positive experiences. New materials with interactive and connective qualities that can be programmable and incorporated into intelligent systems are required to achieve this fully embedded degree of smartness.