Publication Date: 13/09/2019

Title: Product Design Innovation with Sonae Indústria Project : Texture Tiles Project Partnership: Surforma by Sonae Indústria, University of Madeira, ESAD Matosinhos Project Coordination UMa: Shujoy Chakraborty, Sérgio Lemos Project Coordination ESAD: Jeremy Aston Texture Tiles was an academic-industry product design collaboration between the Design Course students of the University of Madeira, Master in Product Design students from ESAD Matosinhos and Sonae Indústria. Product Design students from both UMa and ESAD joined efforts to develop surface tiles for commercial industry applications using the innovative Flexcomp High Pressure Laminate (hpl) material developed by Surforma of Sonae Indústria. The students were technically oriented by product research development experts from Surforma on the unique mechanical and thermal properties of the laminate with the aim to propose applications for this material in acoustic tiling, office furnishing, home furniture, lighting and aerospace sectors of Portugal. The project was launched as a 1 week intensive workshop between February 25 – March 1 2019 with design students of UMa and ESAD working in joint groups in both Madeira and Porto and led by teachers Shujoy Chakraborty and Sérgio Lemos from UMa and Jeremy Aston from ESAD. The 3 Product Design professors combined their academic expertise and industry sector guidelines to orient the students and deliver final concepts. Selected student project outputs were presented in the Sonae Indústria pavilion at Interzum 2019 Cologne, Germany, between May 21-24, which is Europe’s largest interior design industry fair. The final project output was presented to the Portuguese design and manufacturing community on the 30th of July 2019 in the shape of commercial prototypes called the Flexcomp Open Day event held at the factory installation of Sonae Indústria at Porto. This project marks an important highlight in the design teaching at the University of Madeira to create new opportunities of product development and commercialization with a global Portuguese enterprise.