44 3 TheFoundations of Human-Experiential Design background as the designer, it is difficult to understand them. Even in the same or similar cultures, there can be significant misunderstandings. But if an artefact is understood, meaning is shared between the designer and the user. When they share it, the reality gap between the designer and the user is bridged. They understand aspects of the meaning of the artefact and of its functionality as well. This perceived understanding may involve all the natural dimensions of our experiences, including sense experiences such as colour, shape, texture, and sound. Metaphors, integrating imagination and rationality, are as much as a part of our functioning as our sensory perception, and as precious. Designer and user share the meaning (the sense) as though the ability to comprehend through metaphor is like seeing, touching or hearing the same thing. Metaphor is not merely a matter of language, just as design is not merely a matter of the intellect. Experience through the designed object is as if they share the same embodiment for understanding information. It is not too much to say again and again that designers should have the ability to putthemselvesin the users’ place, to ‘sense’ their ‘sense’, to be in their situation, to see through their eyes. The core principle underlying shared feeling, or empathy, is that designer and user are connected when they are both conscious of their here and now. This is how the sharing of primitives for understanding works. In their design activities, designers should be conscious of the present. Users perceive consciously in the present (and only in the present) through using the designed object. We return to the importance of the here and now in Part III. Human-experiential design takes on a different point of view from one based only on designers’ tacit knowledge. Rather, it focuses on the reality of human beings having the same primitives of experience. While it may be that much evolutionary memory is conserved in our senses, much memory is, we believe, hidden for future survival, or transformed to adapt to the present time. If we are patient, these memories will emerge to be appreciated someday (Hosoe 2006). Human-experiential design seeks to play a modest role in redressing unbalanced dichotomies and move towards increasing balance. A human-experiential designer acts as a mediator for blending apparently contradictory viewpoints. In the next chapter (Chap. 4) we start to explain how this is done. References Alexander C (1969) Notes on the synthesis of form. Harvard University, Boston Boland RJ, Tenkasi RV, Te’eni D (1994) Designing information technology to support distributed cognition. Organ Sci 5(3):456–475 Buchanan R(2001) Design research and the new learning. Des Issues 17(4):3–23 Crossley-Holland K (1982) The Penguin Book of Norse myths: Gods of the Vikings. Penguin Books, London De Josselin de Jong JPB (1929) De oorsprong van den goddelijken bedrieger (The origin of the divine trickster). Mededeelingen der Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen. Amsterdam: Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen. Afdeeling Letterkunde, pp 1–29. Deel 68, Serie B