Semantics: Meanings and Contexts of Artifacts

English dictionaries trace the origin of the word, \u27experience\u27 to knowledge of or skill in making experiments. Its etymology suggests an important conceptual truth: experiences are not merely personal and subjective but crucially related to interacting with something of interest, an artifact, an activity, or a situation involving other people. What we will explore here must therefore overcome the objective/subjective Cartesian dichotomy and be concerned instead with how humans experience the world by acting on it and creating it

Design in the Age of Information: A Report to the National Science Foundation (NSF)

The Information Age is upon us - it has become a global force in our everyday lives. But the promise of significant benefits from this revolution, which has been driven largely by technologists, will not be realized without more careful planning and design of information systems that can be integral to the simultaneously emerging user-cultures. In cultural terms, information systems must be effective, reliable, affordable, intuitively meaningful, and available anytime and everywhere. In this phase of the information revolution, design will be essential