Material (and product) sensoriality: Can perceptive evaluations strengthen the meta-design phase? / Sensorialitat dels materials (i dels productes): Es pot reforçar la fase del metadisseny mitjançant les avaluacions perceptives? / Sensorialidad de los materiales (y de los productos): ¿Se puede reforzar la fase del metadiseño mediante las evaluaciones perceptivas?

Products are no longer asked to perform only based on how they performed mostly in the past. They are now expected indeed to consider contemporary social changes and deliver “soft” and non-visual performance, such as greater sensory expression and complex performances, in order to improve the quality and affordability of user experience. This renewed focus on the “invisible aspects of design” generates a space of scientific interest in the design domain, focusing on the need to learn, develop and spread the most suitable tools and methodologies to support the sensory-oriented project, and integrate this fundamental requirement in the early stages of product (or service) design, in other words, focusing on the sensory aspect since the meta-design phase. This paper will present a first overview on the theme of designing the perceptive aspect of a product, showing how this topic has evolved over the years and how material libraries and products themselves are focusing the proposed information and their features toward this aspect. A second part of the work will present a set of tools and methods, driven both from the qualitative and quantitative approach, to be used by designers in order to investigate the issue of perceptive evaluations, always bearing in mind that human beings are the key figures in this process. Subsequently, some crossed-senses tools are presented, as well as several further investigating tools able to define the synesthetic or global perception of a product. Finally some conclusions on the opportunities offered by these methods are discussed.