When most people think of interaction design, they might conjure in their mind’s eye an augmented reality app, a retail touchscreen, even an entire metaverse. When Bonnie Hvillum studied interaction design at Aarhus University, she was instead drawn to the most analog of experiences: the way in which we respond to tactile materials and how their textures and smells evoke powerful feelings and memories within us. This is especially true of biomaterials, new varieties of which she has been inventing in her Natural Material Studio since she founded it in 2019.

If Hvillum sees her work as part of a larger paradigm shift — “a move towards co-living and co-creating within systems and systemic wholes” — it’s because, alongside her keen...