56 4 Designing with Blends The key is to realise that designer and user are connected to each other by sharing primitives arising from embodiment and the experience of embodiment. Designersneedtoobservehumanprimitivesthatarerevealedin interactingwiththe environment,butnottoobservethesubjectasa user.Thisis somewhatdistantfrom a variety of ordinary user research methods such as contextual research, applied ethnography,participatory design and so on. Human-experientialdesigntakestheperspectiveofuserashumanandpartofthe environment,not separate from it. The mediator in this approach integrates design, userandenvironment.Itthusdeniestheobjectivistviewofhumansasseparatefrom others and the environment. Design as mediator should help to us in remembering the wholeness we have forgotten. The mediator is not merely a middleman or a facilitator, but has a major role in which we can answer the question of what it meanstobehumanfromthedesignpointofview. BlendsandWhatTheyAddtoMetaphors As Lakoff and Johnson (1980) describe it a conceptual metaphor refers to the understanding of one idea or conceptual domain, in terms of another. It is a cross- domain mapping, taking elements from one domain and applying them to another. The conceptual domains hypothesized in conceptual metaphors have two main roles: source and target. For example, English expressions like “My computer is adesktop”, which could be taken as a desktop metaphor of a PC. •‘Desktop’ is the source domain from which we bring metaphorical expressions (Mycomputeris adesktop). •‘Mycomputer’isthetargetdomainthatwetrytounderstandandexperience(My computer is a desktop). “Mycomputeris a desktop” offers the primitive material for understanding new concepts. However, it does not directly indicate “a desktop interface of a PC.” The desktop metaphor of a PC is actually a newly emergent space – a blend. According to Imaz and Benyon (2006), “if the metaphor is a cross-domain mapping, taking elements from one domain and applying them to another, then blending is an operation that is applied to two input spaces, and which results in a new, blended space” (p. 43). Blending is the ability to take two mental spaces, and connect them in certain ways such that a blended mental space emerges, and this is the ability that gives rise to the possibility of art, science, and language (Fauconnier and Turner 2002). In the terminology of blending theory, the concept of mental space refers to partial cognitive structures that emerge when we think and talk (Fauconnier 1997). According to Fauconnier (1997), there is a process of mental synthesis where previous experiences, cultural contexts and historical events are brought together to act in the form of frames or schemata, in between language and the real world. Mentalspaces are set up and built on from many sources. ‘Connectors’ link mental