From Sustainable Materials to User-Centered Sustainability: Material Experience in Art Healing

2026-03-01

AI Summary

This study explores user-centered art therapy through sustainable material design, focusing on the psychological and emotional impacts of multisensory material experiences. Using hydrogel as a base, the research develops sustainable materials and evaluates their multimodal sensory qualities—visual, tactile, and olfactory—alongside users’ psychological perceptions. The work proposes a material experience framework tailored for art therapy, emphasizing the translation of material attributes into users’ emotional needs. Findings indicate that “aesthetic” properties exert the strongest influence on therapeutic efficacy, followed by “intrinsic” properties, while “physical” properties show comparatively weaker effects. These results validate the framework’s effectiveness and innovation in guiding human-centered, sustainable material design for therapeutic applications.

Technology Category

• Humans and AI: User Experience and Usability
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Computational Creativity
• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science

Application Category

• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Metrics for user behavior and evaluating success
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Sustainability of Web economics
• Responsible Web: Human-perceived consequences of algorithmic deployment on the web

Abstract

This study develops sustainable materials using hydrogel as the matrix and explores the transition from sustainable materials to user-centered sustainability, with a particular focus on achieving art healing through material experience. The findings reveal that "Aesthetic" property exert the greatest influence on art healing in the context of multimodal material experiences involving visual, tactile, and smell, followed by "Intrinsic" property, whereas "Physical" property have a comparatively limited effect. Furthermore, the study proposes a material experience framework that enables designers to systematically and holistically understanding material characteristics. It highlights the importance of considering users' psychological perceptions and emotional needs in the material design process.

Problem

• sustainable materials
• user-centered sustainability
• material experience
• art healing
• multimodal perception

Innovation

• hydrogel
• material experience
• art healing
• user-centered sustainability
• multimodal perception