Mobilizing Materials Knowledge: exploring the Role of Samples for Supporting Multidisciplinary Collaborative Design for Materials Development

As designers increasingly become involved in larger and more complex multidisciplinary collaborations, they find themselves in unprecedented contexts of practice. New tools and methods are needed to support these challenging ways of working. This paper presents an ethnographic study focusing specifically on the role of materials samples in supporting knowledge sharing and mutual understanding in collaborative materials development. Observations are drawn from a case study of a 3.5 years EU H2020-funded multidisciplinary project which aimed to develop circular materials using a novel Design-Driven Materials Innovation (DDMI) methodology. Materials samples are known to be useful boundary objects for supporting the translation of codified scientific language into experiential language, which is essential for designers to understand materials potential. However, this study suggests that within the context of a complex collaboration, materials samples make knowledge available to all participants, and in particular, they appear to mobilise other forms of knowledge such as ‘know-who’, helping participants to understand the roles and capabilities of their fellow collaborators, enabling them to work together more effectively. This paper proposes a general framework identifying four types of materials samples used in the case study project, and their relationship to four forms of knowledge.