Integrated Design Science: Towards Human-Experiential Design 43 People still struggle to understand and use computers, mobile phones and other embeddedcomputingdevices,whosedesignsarelargelybasedontheformalization of human cognition of the world, and which break the human sense of presence potentially invoked in computer-mediatedenvironments. Although design research for the most part has been evolving in order to bridge the gap between designer and user, mutual understandingcan be especially difficult to share across different cultures, knowledge, values, and assumptions. It can be said that the problem of the gap in mutual understanding between designers and users may come from a blind acceptance of objectivism based on the prestige of science. The gap between designer and user can thus be seen as the gap between objectivism (the rational) and subjectivism (the imagination) as shown in Fig. 3.2. Upuntilnow,scientificdesignresearchhastriedtoestablishanindependentposition through intellectualizing and with a disregard for the nonverbal. By its nature, it is not easy for designers to explain their own irrationality or that of users. Although irrationality does not yield to logic, it is an intrinsic part of life. We can experientially understand that we are not always living by logical reasoning. The irrational comprises a significant portion of our everyday life behaviour. It is time for design researchers and designers to resign themselves to that fact. Instead of rejecting irrationality in designers and users, we should take a healthier attitude and seek to integrate the irrational and rational. Designers in scientific design research and users live in different cultures. Understanding each other, each culture and the world and explicating the irrational areinseparableaspectsofthesameprocess.AsHall(1969)pointedout:“Culturally- based paradigms place obstacles in the path to understanding” (p. 220). Misunder- standingsbetweendesigneranduserarenotunfamiliar.Inverbalcommunicationin everyday life, people need a flexible adaptability in worldview, as well as expertise in finding the appropriate metaphor to communicate the relevant parts of a limited sharing of experiences. They must emphasize the shared experiences while toning others down, and metaphor draws on what is shared. Metaphorical imagination is a critical skill for designers to creating harmony through communicating a shared experiencewith users. The human-experiential approach to design is aimed at integrating creative imagination and rationality. To understand what cannot be comprehended totally, for example senses, feelings and aesthetic experiences, involves seeing one kind of thing in terms of another. This is the integration of reason and imagination, which can be described as metaphorical thought (Lakoff and Johnson 1980). According to Lakoff and Johnson (1980) “our conceptual system is metaphorical in nature. The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another” (p. 5). Metaphors are rooted in physical and cultural experience. Ametaphorcanserveasavehiclefor understandinga conceptonly by virtue of its experiential basis. Designers use metaphors in graphic design, interface design and interaction design, and so on. Metaphors work effectively in relations perceived in similar ways between the designer and the user. If the user doesn’t have the same cultural