Abstract:

The actual industrial panorama shows an increasing interest in the research of some professional figures educated in order to make up new link between the cultural knowledge of engineering and design. In fact, this kind of person could embody a new role, different from the classical definition of technician with his skills, by exploiting creativity and organized rationality in the same time. The academic environment could develop this professional entity formed by starting new research path on the crossing disciplines and by involving this commingling of knowledge and innovation in the ordinary faculty courses of the Design and Engineering schools. The necessity of this feature is due to the rising problem, of express the sensorial and immaterial aspects of materials in an systematic way for instance. Those expressive and sensorial aspects have became an indispensable element in the selection of materials for industrial application. The good selection reflects the good performances that the industrial professionals are looking for. The skin of the products determines their preferences in terms of appreciation, affection and sell. The training program for researcher and professional that want to apply their seeking on this field needs the possibility to involve and construct a network able to enhance the huge grade of security on the management of those innovative arguments. The research could be useful as an open window to find which subjects as Emotional Design, Kansei Engineering, Multisensory Design had been already investigated and which are the new entries in the top of the list. By taking into account the surface treatment of material as the best subject that could be investigated to obtain interesting inspirations there will be the possibility to transform the user experience into a deep sensory interaction. The developing tool that could help in this direction is the Sensory Metrology. A tool that derives from the Sensorial Analysis usually used in the food and cosmetic companies. This discipline could be introduced in the annual students university program as a part of training in order to help the students during the practical laboratories to achieve the right selection by taking into account the user preference and experience with the material surface. Interesting results have been obtained by the use of Napping® tests in order to define easy and readable data organized per maps and schemes. The research training could involve workshop activities and other experiments by taking in reference samples that derives from a particular industrial sector. By the way this could be a sort of classification of some sectorial reference in order to reach a final global research on the industrial's sector needs. This dissertation concerning the miscellaneous knowledge developed by the commingling of skills and panoramas could became an announcement useful for the feasibility of a innovative teaching methodology that could open the door to the introduction of Sensory Analysis and its declination in the academic and research side.

Keywords:

Materials selection, Sensorial Properties, Crossing disciplines, Sensorial Analysis, Innovative Teaching Methodologies.