'Life' as a basis for holistic ICT design

Technology should be harnessed to support and enhance the quality of people's everyday life. This is why the analysis of life should form the very beginning of ICT-design. Current trends in the design of ICT products and services seldom truly manage to support the goals that people have in their lives. This is especially evident tendency in technology driven design. Consequently, design processes lack the ability to holistically consider life and thus often fail in producing successful artefacts that would support people's lives. The re-evaluation of design thinking is important now as technology development is focusing more and more on services. Design of service concepts, if any, has to be carried out with a much broader design approach than what the traditional approaches to human-technology design can offer. A workable solution is to adopt 'Life-Based Design', with the premise in 'forms of life' as a analytical ground concept for ICT design. In order to gain understanding on where to go and which aspects to stress in the design from the user's point of view, it is crucial to understand how the users perceive their everyday life, what kinds of biological, psychological and socio-cultural restrictions and incentives they have in their daily activities, and how these would collide with the demands of the information society.