The aesthetics of material performance within design is typically only considered up to the
point of sale, a false end state in which the ‘newness’ of the product is protected by the hermetic packaging in which it is sold. Beyond this, the ‘ageing’ of a material is thought of only in terms of utility or easily measured technical parameters such as durability or toughness, and rarely reflects upon, or accounts for, the user’s experiential relationship with the material. Here, we
explore changes in tactile and visual perceptions when sample materials have been artificially aged through the application of a taxonomy of damage observed from real world products. This paper argues that to expand our current knowledge in material culture and to assist in providing a more nuanced understanding of the user’s long-term relationship with materials, we, as designers, need to observe, record and reflect upon attitudinal reactions to aged and used materials.
Funding
This work was supported by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council who provided partial funding for this study as part of the Closed Loop Emotionally Valuable E-waste Recovery project (EP/K026380/1).
History
Published in
Product Lifetimes And The Environment
2017 - Conference Proceedings
Pages
238 - 244
Citation
MANLEY, A.H.G. ...et al., 2017. The look of rough: Visual and tactile perceptions of cosmetically aged materials. IN: Bakker, C. and Mugge, R. (eds.) PLATE: Product Lifetimes and The Environment, Conference Proceedings, 8-10 November, 2017, Delft, NL. Amsterdam: IOS Press, pp. 238-244.
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Acceptance date
2017-02-27
Publication date
2017-11-08
Notes
This is an Open Access Article. It is published by IOS Press under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International Licence (CC BY-NC). Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b-nc/4.0/