Building the emotional link between consumers, products and services.

The use of new materials and technologies will play a role in shaping our future surroundings. A major challenge is the integration of new materials, such as nanotech and composites, with our current surroundings and everyday products. They pose a major challenge for designers and engineers, as well as the rest of us that have to use and consume these less familiar technologies.

Nanotech is an exciting area of material development for designers. There are many examples of products and materials that harness the extreme properties of nanotech, such as self-cleaning surface coatings, super strong and super light composites, and colour-shifting finishes. The exciting potential of these new discoveries, such as carbon nanotubes, has yet to be fully explored in the design of our everyday surroundings. Recently, however, the use and applications of nanotech materials has been criticised, because the impact of these materials and substances on our health and environment is not yet fully understood.

Designers are familiar with proposing and designing many years ahead. New materials and technologies demonstrate a vision of what's around the corner. Whilst it is essential to take current knowledge and understanding into account, designers have another important role: to challenge the rest of us to see an otherwise unexpected future.

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"Materials, memories, and our daily surroundings all influence the work of design Rob Thompson. His project Material Memories combines surface ageing, technology and our emotional bonding with products. The style and approach was heavily influenced by his experiences of growing up in Norfolk, England, in an Elizabethan, timber-frame cottage. By mixing 'experienced' materials (those available for resuse such as waste or something more personal) with plastic, he created a surface effect that will change over time as it is used. Taking advantage of the irregularities in the manufacturing process, each product is visually unique. Although mixing these materials inevitably makes the plastic used harder to recycle, the notion that product is meant to change with its owner over time, ideally creating an emotional bond, gives Material Memories an extended life span. In the end, the owner has a stool that is unmatched by any other and that will constantly evolve as the surface wears to expose more of its hidden materials." (Brower, Mallory and Ohlman, Experimental Eco Design, 2005)