Chapter3 TheFoundations of Human-Experiential Design Abstract The main aim of this chapter is to set the scene for a new way of bridging the dichotomy between technological and human concerns. The human- experiential design approach offers a perspective from which both kinds of concern can be met, by providing a third way, which is neither objective nor subjective. It is a theoretical response to the design problems described in Chap. 2. The chapter presents the background to this alternative design practice and suggests that design canpotentiallyplayapartinintegratingarangeofattitudinaloppositions.Itgoeson to suggest how the designer’s role should be re-positioned with respect to scientific design research. Introduction Our society has long been led by the development of scientific technology. Technology is the primary force behind the production and development of novel interactive systems and information/communication systems, and we live in what has been called the technology-driven society (Hara 2007). Much recent design in relation to the use of technology has been in service of what is essentially technologicalmastery,aimingto makegoodthepromiseofproductsandservicesin everyday life, and often whose forming activity was initiated by technology itself. Atypical example is product design, which has largely become a presentation tool to introduce newly invented technology with attractive forms and interfaces. All these newly designed products connect to the Internet, which itself contains attractive graphics designed for web sites and theatrical virtual realities discretely generated from numericaldata. These design styles have sometimes penetratedinto ourphysicalenvironmentandarchitecture,aimingtoutiliseandmakeattractivenew materials and structures that technology also recently brought forth. In contrast to the technology-driven approach, an experiential approach is the pursuit not of technology but of human sensual perception to invoke an animating force of design and creativity (Waterworth 1997, 2003). Experiential approaches to designing interactive systems have already been discussed in the HCI literature (e.g. Dourish 2001;Lund2003;Fällman 2003;ImazandBenyon2006;Waterworth 1999). ©Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016 31 J. Waterworth, K. Hoshi, Human-Experiential Design of Presence in Everyday Blended Reality, Human–Computer Interaction Series, DOI10.1007/978-3-319-30334-5_3