6 Personal Content Experience: Managing Digital Life in the Mobile Age aspects of our culture and society, it should not be studied separately. We will try to address the personal content ecosystem – not only the content itself, but also the variety of human behaviours and processes related to it, and the technical solutions that are needed to support such processes. We cannot cover all aspects related to personal content experience in detail (it would require a series of thick books) but will focus on some key areas, and then briefl y introduce some related issues. We will assume a consumer-oriented view: when we introduce a technology, we will also show how it relates to the life of the design personas introduced in the Prologue. We strongly believe that it is possible to build systems that are understandable by the average person in terms of purpose, use, and outcomes, even though they may contain non-trivial mechanisms that handle complex data streams. The user- centred design approach emphasises people over technology. This book combines views of personal content, consumer-oriented media and content management technologies, global megatrends, user interfaces, and software design. We will discuss the components of personal content management systems, ranging from system and data- base levels to middleware, applications and services, user interfaces, and users. The topic of personal content spreads across several disciplines and professions, and we explore them from several different points of view. The aim is to identify the aspects that are critical for the general public and discuss the consequences they imply to the system design, application design, and user interface design. Beyond technical aspects, we also discuss the changes in use patterns and social behaviour, provoked by the mobile personal content phenomenon, and show that the impact is more fundamental than it may fi rst appear. The purpose of this book is twofold. On one hand, we make practi- cal statements on how certain essential technical issues can be addressed and solved, and provide a reference software architecture design for a mobile personal content management system, coupled with comprehensive design drivers and criteria for user interfaces designed for content management in mind. These aspects are backed up with results, which we have gained from research – analysing soci- etal, cultural, and behavioural trends in addition to technology evalu- ations. From this point of view, this book is best suited for software developers, user experience and interface designers, team managers, and other practitioners and professionals dealing with application and system development, especially those related to mobility, consumer media, and personal content management.