Abstract
The Material Explorer is a materials selection support tool for designers. It provides inspiration and visual exploration of rich media content. The Material Explorer is a web-based software application. Digital content is centrally stored and updated by a network of scouts and editors. A (required) broadband internet connection provides access to information about products, materials and technologies. Company and literature references allow requests for more information or physical material samples. The design research project concerned four phases, in which the final proposal was realised. Phase one, first an analysis into the use of materials by industrial designers has been done. Together with the evaluation of current material information tools (on usability and content), this has been the input for scenario building and drawing up the design requirements. In phase two, a first concept was developed, based on the design requirements together with a previous exercise of basic interface models. This concept has been presented to my supervisors, material experts and interaction experts, for their comments. Phase three, resulted in an altered concept, using the comments of the previous phase. This second concept and three different user-centred future scenarios have been presented and discussed with industrial designers. The user scenarios supported the designers in understanding the usefulness of the tool within its context. Finally, in phase four, a final interface proposal was realized using the feedback and experiences of the previous phases. The proposed interface has been demonstrated and commented by design students. The results of this project, including a demonstration of the proposed Material Explorer interface, have been documented on a CDROM included with the project report.