Structure for a Material Informational Database: A Material Selection Tool for Project Development

In the last years, several aspects related to product features other than good operation and usefulness have been discussed. Studies regarding this topic enlighten the importance of user-product emotional interaction. Materials work as a link in this relation, as they may transfer part of its personality to the products through its tangible and intangible characteristics. The study of the material's technical aspects is widely supported by a large number of software, books and scientific researches. However, their aspects appealing to subjectivity do not share the same support. Therefore, the existing methods of material selection and sources of research do not provide the support demanded by user-focused projects. Thus, this paper presents an approach towards the development of an informational database support for a materials library, aiming to the description of the materials intangible characteristics. The development was supported by two researches for retrieving data, used for establishing a classification of verbal attributes used by people when referring to materials. This led the development of concept libraries, which are used to organize the data that goes in the system. This article focuses on the development of concept libraries, and not on the informational system itself