PERCEIVED QUALITY
MATto is particularly interested in the aspects of perceived quality and the sensory nature of products and materials. It supports, with a scientific approach, the design of soft/invisible design characteristics, from the ‘feel’ of a surface to a product’s characteristic sound.
At MATto, materials are also described according to their tactile, visual, sound and smell characteristics. Materials have a recognised importance in design projects, supporting their technical performance and at the same time determining their personality.
PERCEIVED QUALITY
MATto is particularly interested in the aspects of perceived quality and the sensory nature of products and materials. It supports, with a scientific approach, the design of soft/invisible design characteristics, from the ‘feel’ of a surface to a product’s characteristic sound.
At MATto, materials are also described according to their tactile, visual, sound and smell characteristics. Materials have a recognised importance in design projects, supporting their technical performance and at the same time determining their personality.
WHAT WE CAN DO FOR YOU
SOUND
‘I manufacture luxury cosmetics. My sales network is telling me that my top-of-the-range face cream has a “cheap” sound. How can I improve that?’
TOUCH
‘I produce snacks. I’d like the packaging I use for my products to communicate their crunchiness before customers even taste them. How can this be done?’
SMELL
‘We make car interiors. I’d like to use fabrics in our new 100% environmentally friendly concept car that communicate the sustainable nature of our product to customers through its smell. Can you help me?’
SOUND
‘I manufacture luxury cosmetics. My sales network is telling me that my top-of-the-range face cream has a “cheap” sound. How can I improve that?’
TOUCH
‘I produce snacks. I’d like the packaging I use for my products to communicate their crunchiness before customers even taste them. How can this be done?’
SMELL
‘We make car interiors. I’d like to use fabrics in our new 100% environmentally friendly concept car that communicate the sustainable nature of our product to customers through its smell. Can you help me?’
INSTRUMENTATION
Thanks to the instrumentation we use to analyse perceived quality, we can investigate the sensory qualities of materials and products.
Some of the instrumentation we use to do this includes:
- an Eye-tracking machine technology that allows us to track the eye movements that users make whilst, for example, exploring a website
- Sensotact® a device that describes the tactile qualities of a material using reference tables and samples
- SounBe an instrument that assesses the quality of the sound that materials emit, helping us design the sound of products
METHODOLOGY
We use strict and increasingly precise methods to support the assessment of the sensory qualities of materials and products.
Thanks to our material ‘tasters’, a sensory dictionary has been created that MATto uses to define and catalogue materials belonging to different families of materials with different physical forms.
RESEARCH CONDUCTED ON THE SENSORY QUALITIES OF MATERIALS
A great deal of theoretical and applied research has been done up to now in the field of the sensory nature of materials in a number of manufacturing sectors, both at a national and international level.
As regards the many senses we have investigated particularly closely, here are a few of the sectors we have worked on in the past, though we can’t wait to investigate new ones!
VISITING THE MATERIALS LIBRARY ARCHIVE
If you’d like to visit our materials archive, come to our head office in the Mirafiori area of Turin.
The archive is accessible through various different services, with the assistance of researchers from the Politecnico di Torino, upon prior booking.
If you’d like to get to know us, come visit us for coffee at our next MATERIALS & COFFEE event or book an appointment now!
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