The critical exploration of materials for the design project. A method of analysis below the levels of consciousness

The research field is the culture of design material, characterized by particular attention to environmental and perceptual aspects: materials are tested using non-verbal methods. According to the most advanced orientation of design culture, the choice of materials suitable for a given project should be dealt with in the meta-planning phase, which is thus extended and charged with meaning: materials have a recognized weight in the project, they support its technical functions and at the same time create its personality. In the ongoing process of innovation in the field of materials research, the topic of the perception of materials has become central; their expressive-sensorial properties, elegant and accentuated, have acquired growing importance: the way man perceives materials and evaluates his experience of them is increasingly taken into consideration. This new, complex approach to the project, and in particular to the metaproject, is organized through the critical exploration of materials and is completed with the support of virtual reality and prototyping. Real and virtual models of design proposals showing maps of the materials to be evaluated are presented to the client, using both traditional and new methods. The decisions made by the designers according to technical criteria, costs, the sensorial and environmental characteristics, can in fact be evaluated, even unconsciously, through the use of non-verbal methods and equipment, such as the eye-tracking machine, a hypothetical means of final verification. Eye-tracking offers important elements regarding the capacity of the product/interface to attract/hold or to rebuff the attention of the observer: it is based on the registration of what a subject observes or ignores when deciding to take a given product into consideration. The analysis is applicable with equivalent efficacy to real and virtual prototypes: an interesting move towards virtuality thanks to the optimization of costs offered by the equipment. The paper will deal with explaining the innovative method of evaluation of materials for the metaproject, with particular awareness of perception and ecocompatibility in a case study on car seats.