How associative material characteristics create textile reflection in design education

Abstract Product design, and especially relevant for this study in textile design, is concerned with designing not only products but also the materials that form the products. Here, designers should relate their materials and products to an existing context and environment that correspond to future users’ created meanings and experiences. Therefore, for design education, it is essential to discuss the diversity of material attributes that have to be considered as well as the creative process of actually designing materials in order to obtain the desired properties, characteristics and meanings. As educators of future designers we are concerned with teaching students, how to develop and use materials for “future design” in a way that embraces multiple properties, including aesthetic, technical, functional and sustainable concerns. In this paper we are specifically concerned with associative meanings and how they affect the design of new materials and how links between associations and physical properties of materials can be created. To elaborate on this two educational exercises are introduced. In the first exercise students, in groups, were asked to order physical materials by means of material attributes ranging from being highly physical to being highly experiential. The educational aims of the exercise were to train students in communicating the often-tacit meanings of materials and to provide a tool to visualize and evaluate subjective and objective attributes equally. In the second exercise students were asked to translate and interpret abstract key phrases into physical textile materials or compositions. The aim was primarily to encourage students to reflect on how personal associations can be embodied in textile materials. The discussion and results of the exercises stressed how meanings of attributes need to be mediated, socially as well as individually and that different modes of learning are required to obtain a better comprehension of the diversity of material attributes.

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