Every connected system is already inside a social situation. Every situation contains more social potential than current design has accessed. The relations already present, the human goals operating beneath the surface task, the moments

of possible acknowledgment or connection — all of this is there, in every interaction pattern we have normalized.

Finding that surplus — making it visible, making it specific — is where our design process begins.

→ Surplus of Social Possibility

Resonance is the quality of experience that remains after the task is done.

It is the difference between a system that was useful and one that was worth having.

It arises when a system attends to the full situation — when it responds to the human goal behind the task, not only to the task itself.

Resonance is what we design toward. It does not replace efficiency: a resonant experience that fails to complete the task is a failed design. But efficiency without resonance produces life in permanent task mode: technically served, experientially impoverished.

Human experience is the end. Not the means to an end.

→ Resonance

Techno-social situation is an experience design space where technology starts to participate in the context of social relations, beyond isolated tasks, inviting moments of meaning and purpose to everyday context.

Techno-social situation is a design perspective that focuses on human goals, values, intentions, and context, as an active resource for designing how technology participates in human experience.

Techno-social situation perspective invites a view of the world as an open, emergent place where every person and thing is always in a dynamic process of becoming, involved in fluid relations, and always open to new possibilities and to what’s next.

Techno-social situation is about technology and design, intentionally making room for new, compelling human experiences that can differentiate what otherwise would be a conventional function.

The essence of always-on, adaptive digital objects and systems is less about automating tasks or exerting control but more about expanding possibilities of how people and technology can co-participate in experience.

Adaptive technology has the ability to resonate and harmonize with our intentions and emotions. This opens up new opportunities for experience design to expand expressive interaction space, inviting new forms of emotional resonance that are closer to how we make sense of the situation and relate to one another and the world around us through expressions, impressions, and influence.

Expressions better convey the inner states of always-on technology and its essential properties, provide context for interpretations, generate expectations, and resonate with our intentions and emotions.

We interact with digital objects that are less like passive tools and more like networked, always-on, responsive entities, receiving input from the world around them, not just from the single user.

Adaptive always-on technology becomes more than a tool; it becomes our companion and active participant in techno-social situation.

Technology as a companion helps us engage with possible human goals of experience, not just with instrumental tasks and functions.

Adaptive companions will not only facilitate tasks in techno-social situation but also learn to adapt to human dimensions by supporting our emotional and ethical response to a situation.

Experience with technology as a companion is about helping us find our unique view of the situation, showing us new aspects of reality, intentionally revealing unseen or taken for granted qualities, inviting new relations, new services and moments of emotional awareness.

We are in a moment when we need to continue learning by imagining that things could be different when we re-prioritize human values and intentions embedded in objects, technology, and social context.

Designing experiences for/with ML & generative AI needs imagination as strategically transformative energy to reframe design situation toward the human dimension, seeking meaning in the fresh context of needs and values. Intentionally engaging in transformation requires social imagination. Social imagination offers a disruptive perspective, a new organization of meaning, revealing new possibilities through which products/systems can actively participate in shared human experience.

We see imagination as a path to the empathetic threshold, linking tangible and emotional detail with conceptual meaning in an open construction of meaningful experience: Imagination is the most advanced design process we have.