It's been noticed that recognizing the end user's needs and expectations are increasingly important factors for creating successful products. In the Mode-project we are studying the socio-cultural context of users and products and developing methods to model it for the use of industrial design and product development. The functionality or usefulness of products is not our main interest, instead we are keen to know what kind of meanings people give to products and what kind of role they have in the social interaction. The starting point for the method development is scenario building. Design scenarios make the context understandable and they can be used as a communication tool during the product development process.

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