Exploring the design applications of key emerging materials from natural sciences through a design ideation workshop

Abstract

The design direction is shifting towards new design landscapes with alive and adaptive aesthetic features and functions and confronting natural alternative designs. Designers, architects, and artists have proposed the exploration of emerging materials by exploiting synthetic biology, bionics, chemical technology, and material science to create new design alternatives with natural aesthetic features and functions. In practice, however, designers are not properly familiar with the potential applications of these emerging materials and their alive and adaptive aesthetic and functional features in product design. Thus, particularly in traditional product design development, the applications of these materials are untouched resulting from three hindering factors. First, knowledge regarding potential applications of emerging materials for product design is lacking. Second, designers’ creativity is restricted because they are not able to disconnect from established product design solutions. Third, the current product design scope does not allow designers to go beyond traditional product design processes. The present study conducted a design ideation workshop by employing a design-led problem-solving process with eight design graduate students from product design and intelligent system design majors. The purpose of the workshop was to explore the three factors and understand the requirements, constraints, and opportunities for new product design concepts with alive and adaptive aesthetic features and functions by exploiting and integrating emerging materials from natural sciences into product design.