Chapter5 Bridging Contextual Gaps with Blended Reality Spaces Abstract The major barrier to easily used and understood interactive technology is often a contextual reality gap between users and designers, and between different classesofuser.Inthischapterwediscusstheimportanceofcontextinunderstanding communications and provide examples of problems arising from a lack of shared context. We then outline the potential of blended reality spaces to bridge contextual realitygapsbetweenthephysicalworldandthevirtualandsoprovideasharedspace forpresence,communicationandaction.Aslongaswecanactinthephysicalworld, wecanenact intentions related to the virtual – if the blended space is successfully designed.Wegoontosuggestthat,throughhuman-experientialdesign,theblended reality approach can be extended to a range of application areas, including health care and rehabilitation. Introduction Making sense of any communication and of many interactive situations depends on sharing a context, except in those rare situations when only context-free explicit statements are exchanged – as at times in a court of law. In all other situations, and throughout our lives, we use context unconsciously to make sense of what is happening and what others are saying. The major barrier to easily used and understood interactive technology is often a contextual reality gap between users and designers, and between different classes of user. Increasingly often, the introductionofembeddedandworntechnologyintothephysicalenvironmentopens up contextual reality gaps when users try to function in both. Blended reality spaces are designed to bridge this gap and provide a shared space for presence, communicationandaction. As in all blend-based design (see Chap. 4), in designing blended reality spaces we combine aspects of one input space with those of another – to arrive at a new integrated reality that has the potential to eventually stand as a thing-in-itself in our understanding.Whendesigningblendedrealityspaces,oneoftheinputspacesisthe physicalworld,andtheproductofourdesignprocessisarealitythatblendsaspects ©Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016 61 J. Waterworth, K. Hoshi, Human-Experiential Design of Presence in Everyday Blended Reality, Human–Computer Interaction Series, DOI10.1007/978-3-319-30334-5_5