Sensory and Sustainable Strategies in the Methodological Approach to Design

Today, design implies not only compliance with product technical-functional requirements but also with increasingly broader cultural demands concerning humans and the environment: respectively sensory attributes and environmental requirements.

The various disciplines involved have recently made considerable progress, by developing tools and methods that, interconnected and also with the development of neurosciences, are able to furnish increasingly realistic, scientific and objective explanations as to how we perceive the world. The paper presents an innovative approach, the ICS (Innovation, Comprehension, Sustainability) method and the correlated tools, which in some case have been patented by the Politecnico di Torino research group. In this way, by adopting the ICS method, the theoretical and scientific innovations should be translated into strategic instruments dedicated to large, small and medium enterprises.

Moreover, use of the ICS method is illustrated by presenting two case studies, the car seats concepts and the chocolate bar packaging, where the analysis is concentrated on sensory perception, in particular by using the Eye-tracking and Sensotact® tools.