Design Spaces is a good example of modern design research. It combines practical design work with courageous conceptual development and theorizing, art with technology, and user-centered methods with the social sciences. It also builds on Nordic tradition. The ethos driving it is a combination of humanistic spirit, inherited from participatory design (users are involved in design processes), with up-to-date understanding of research in technology and an almost instinctive artistic preference for simplicity.

In technological terms, the book examines an important design issue, the notion of "ubiquitous computing" first dreamt up by Mark Weiser in Palo Alto. With their colleagues and students, Thomas Binder and Maria Hellström give us a marvelous opportunity to understand design research as practiced in the Southern shores of Scandinavia these days. Also, they give us a wealth of examples, processes, and approaches needed to make ubiquitous computing not just another technology fad, but a something that may improve our lives and make our experience with our man-made environment more natural and fluent.