Materials Liaisons: facilitating communication in design-driven material innovation (DDMI) projects

In an increasingly complex ‘problem’ landscape, interdisciplinary collaboration is becoming an important part of design practice. Yet designers use very different language and methods to other disciplines, which can be a significant barrier to communication, shared understanding and trust. New methods to enable effective communication between designers and other disciplines are needed across the design industry. This paper presents research from an EU H2020 funded project which is trialling a new Design-Driven Material Innovation (DDMI) methodology. The collaborative process, involving designers, scientists and manufacturers, presents a number of challenges, particularly in enabling people with very different disciplinary/national/cultural languages to understand one another. For the project to move forward, at the very least, designers need to understand the material’s potential and scientists need to understand what designers want the material to ‘be like’. Effective ‘materials communication’ is crucial. The study focusses on one approach – appointing ‘materials liaison officers’ – to facilitate the interdisciplinary exchange of materials information at a crucial stage in the project, when the first materials prototypes were being developed in response to design concepts. Drawing on interviews and workshop material the author discusses the benefits and limitations of using a ‘bilingual’ liaison to translate material understanding from one discipline to another. The findings highlight a number of aspects that affect interdisciplinary materials communication such as familiarity with the material type being developed, the number of processes involved in production of the material, the approach of the designer, and the role of materials samples as boundary objects to anchor the dialogue. There are implications for interdisciplinary design projects more generally, where communication is equally challenging and important.