The Ultra Surfaces Vision

This chapter presents the Ultra Surface design vision as the result of design-led research on the new category of Connected, Interactive Smart Materials. The chapter presents the new opportunities of designing surfaces with special power to integrate into products or interior spaces reshaping the intelligence of environments and the smart aesthetic experience of users. Experiencing Ultra Surfaces arouses a variety of emotions as a consequence of a process that involves body and mind in the frame of a specific socio-cultural context. Given a specific context and a beholder, the sensory interaction with the surface actives an intimate touch and an interpretation process that generates the meaning of the space or a product. The chapter presents the Vision and an extensive activity of research through didactic with a new applied method. The scenarios of the envisioned Ultra Surfaces exploit at the maximum the two parallel channels of the interaction, the physical and the digital one.