Selecting materials in Product Design
All products that you use have been made of materials and that is so obvious, that when you interact with products you almost forget that the materials are an intermediary between you and the product's functionality. But materials achieve more. Materials play an important role in the experiences people have with products. Users see the colors of materials, feel the texture and its weight and hear a sound when moving the object.
These sensory observations contribute to the emotions products can elicit. We see that interaction standards have risen in the past decades, where a higher emphasis has come to lie on functional and emotional benefits. Product designers thus need to design products that distinguish themselves based on both high technical standards and high user-interaction standards. Selecting materials is one of the aspects of designing products and therefore it is expected that how product designers select materials is also influenced by the objectives of the products they design. But how does a product designer consider these standards in materials selection?
Above question is the main topic of my PhD project at the faculty of Industrial Design Engineering. It leads to the main thought that in selecting materials the integration of technical aspects and user-interaction aspects is also present; however it is unknown product designers integrate these aspects and how they can be supported in their process. Therefore, we are exploring these issues from two angles. The first angle concentrates on the topics that are considered during design and how they interact such as the technical and user-interaction aspects. The second angle concentrates on the activities and work of product designers that lead to specified materials.
To start with the first angle, we found that when comparing products made of different materials consumers perceive products differently in terms of image and personality, two aspects related to user-interaction. Materials do thus influence the user interaction. However, personality and materials are not the only aspects of a product. There are many more such as costs, shape, environment, use and function. Designers use considerations on these and other aspects to guide them in creating a product form, but not by considering them one by one. Many of the aspects interact, which makes designing a balancing act between different aspects. Design methodologists have formulated models to make this balancing comprehensible. In one of the studies of this PhD project different models from design methodology were compared for finding the elements of product design that are considered during materials selection. This study resulted in an integrated model that shows the materials - personality relation embedded in the interactions that materials have with other elements of product design (see the pictures). Models like this show the complexity of designing when including users’ interaction aspects, but help to understand the relations between decisions in designing such as materials and product personality decisions.
From the second angle, materials selection activities of product designers are assessed. Literature describing materials selection does often not thoroughly consider user-interaction aspects. Thus, to describe designers’ materials selection, new research activities were needed. Empirical data was obtained by interviewing product designers to create a process model that reflects the materials selection activities of product designers. The results led to a Material Selecting Activities model (MSA model), which has characteristics of product design models in a sense that the activities form a cyclic sequence which is followed while the materials are more and more specialized. It thus shows that the activities of selecting materials occur from the early stages in product design throughout the whole product design phase and not only towards the end. Another contribution of the MSA model can be found in the way this model explicitly describes activities supporting other activities, such as performing tests, gathering information and consulting materials experts. From discussions with young designers we learned that they often do not recognize these activities as work, although they are essential to select materials.
As shown the research activities so far resulted in theoretical descriptions of the topics involved in material selection and the activities product designers undertake to select materials. The PhD work however will not only contributes to theories, but also tries to translate these theories into a practical tool, which is developed at this moment. This tool aims at structuring the conversations product designers have with clients in the beginning of a design project. The intended effect is that product designers understand the desired user-interaction aspects that the client want to achieve with his product. The results of the conversations can then be a good starting point for materials searches.
This project is part of the ‘Engineering design with new materials’ research topic within the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering. Within this research topic guidelines are developed to optimize the selection and application of materials in products and technologies in design, and the mechanical behavior of plastics.
Parts of this article are previously published in IO News. IO News is a publication of the faculty of Industrial Design Engineering of the Delft University of Technology.