About this Book

To meet the needs and desires of end users, design teams must select materials in a manner that thoughtfully balances functional and expressive product concerns. For functional concerns, materials information and selection tools of a technical nature, intended for use by engineers, are somewhat reluctantly adopted. For expressive concerns, designers usually rely on personal or company experiences, since no commercially available material selection tools exist. This chapter elaborates on the need to provide design teams – and industrial designers specifically – with improved materials selection tools, within the general remit of designing for product experience. Central to the argumentation is the proposition of what may be termed ‘user-centered materials selection’, for which four prototypical materials selection tools are presented. The chapter concludes that industrial designers should be encouraged to activate a personal material inspiration journey for their projects, prior to adopting any procedural material selection process typical of engineering.