Design touch matters: Bending and stretching the potentials of smart material composites

In the past decade, the interest in collaborative materials development projects with designers and materials scientists has gained momentum. Designers’ involvement in early materials development is expected to inform the development process about the potentials of a new material, beyond the values of efficiency and convenience. This paper-based PhD thesis is an attempt to understand what design can do for materials development through studying and questioning current practice. The research has evolved in the specific context of the EU project, Light.Touch.Matters (LTM) that put into practice a proposed methodology for organizing such collaborative projects. The LTM project and its organization set the departure point for further investigations into the new design situation.