The rapid development of emerging technologies, of the phenomenon of the Internet of things (IoT) and generally speaking of smart interactive products have been changing the way we live and interact with each other. As one of the main consequences of the rise of smartness in everyday life, we are witnessing a change in materials as well, moving from traditional materials characterized by being latent, to emerging materials with adaptive and dynamic capabilities responding to the need of users’ demands for smartness. This is possible thanks to the increasing miniaturization of technologies (sensors and actuators) and their integration into materials, generating material systems defined by a hybrid nature and interactive behaviours. They are able to sense human parameters and the surrounding, light-up, change shape, process signals, act as an interface so that becoming a new medium between users and the environment. This new class of materials opens up several opportunities for user experience and engagement thanks to novel channels of interaction able to create surprising experiences as well. Moreover, this phenomenon poses new challenges and requirement for the design discipline to be faced.

Scholars in Design and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) who have been studying the subject elaborated different concepts and definitions, as follows. Brownell (2014) came up with the concept of expanded matter–or X-matter. This definition identifies materials effectively enhanced with additional capacities such as tracking, sensing, responding, interacting, by the integration of information technologies. They are metamaterials that have properties that they would not otherwise have, due to the way they are structured or layered and work systemically. The definition of Augmented Materials (Razzaque et al., 2013) refers to materials with generic physical and computational properties, in which electronics are seamless and embed-