The purpose of this paper is to discuss a set of issues which illustrate the importance for the design and development of telematic services that comes from a good understanding of the user, his role and his participation in the consumption and utilisation of these services.

In fact, new communication and information technologies together with the telematic services that they enable are becoming a natural part of daily life in contemporary society, influencing communication and interaction processes on both personal and social levels. For these reasons, it is relevant to study and to gain an understanding about the implications of this transversal communicational process upon different communities and levels:

• educational level (redesigning and adapting the learning-teaching and cognitive models);
• scientific level (understanding how research and knowledge construction diffusion is evolving);
• public and democratic level (understanding how the involvement and participation of citizens in social and political roles is being transformed);
• work organisation level (understanding how new communication and information technologies affects the organisational skills and the flexibility of work processes);
• media consumption level, in particular in what concerns TV (understanding how emerging TV interactive technologies might influence the way people consume and react to TV services and eventually play a role in the definition of TV contents). The study of these issues is targeted to acquisition of a better understanding about the changes that new telematic services cause on the user as a communicational individual. This research will, it is hoped, contribute to gain a better vision about the construction of new communicational paradigms based upon the interaction, share and participation.