The 'Design For Meaning' research is based on the logic that people prioritise meanings alongside the functional benefits when shaping personality, self-identity and worldview. A person acquires a designed artefact not only because it provides some specific benefits , but because it becomes incorporated into the lifestyle of the person. Understanding people's personality and the reasons why something or someone is significant and of personal or symbolic value for them can be seen as the peculiar total of the artefact they acquire and use.
Designed artefacts often carry cultural and social meanings, underlining their non-neutrality.

The 'Design For Meaning' research addresses the need for an increased attention and emphasis on the part of designers to the conceiving, measuring and validating of meaning. The aim is to reduce the gap between the designer's intention and people's interpretation of the designed artefact. The objective is to develop a toolkit for designers for organising the consideration of the intended meaning of artefacts.

Particular emphasis is placed on the thinking process, dialogue and use of semantics consumers and designers typically associate to the understanding of the designed artefact. Research also focuses on identifying human centred design methods for the purpose of designing artefacts based on new meanings and new scenarios for the consumers, including the use of data, designing ethnography, projective techniques, real fictions and co-creation.

Results to date have established three main categories of meaning covering a spectrum from the purely instrumental to the purely symbolic: 'function', 'ritual' and 'myth' and have developed a linguistic vocabulary for constructing interview questions, questionnaires, and other ethnographic and co-design elements in relation to meaning. While previous research based on scientific reasoning mostly covers cognitive aspects of human thought, it doesn't fully cannot account for "feeling good" when performing a ritual or placing "social value" on a myth. Not everything of value to people is functional towards the achievement of a simple measurable outcome. Much of life is about "experience" and much of life is about the value of "information" or "expression".

Current AI-based technologies with their social robots or autonomous road vehicles are acquiring new symbolic roles which influence the way people communicate, create identity, establish relationships and build rituals and habits. Though often subtle rather than abrupt, the shifts are influencing behaviours and meanings. Given the ever-increasing complexity of our technologies and the ever-growing societal sophistication, tools are needed in support of design activities for the purposes of conceiving, measuring and validating meanings.