Proceeding of the Joint International Symposium on Deformatuon Monitoring. 2-4 November, 2011. Hong Kong. China. Report. The design of a structural health monitoring system is mainly governed by the information required by civil and structural engineers. With more structures being constructed incorporating long-term monitoring systems and being managed by owners or engineering firms, a shift of the design concept from an engineering approach to a user-centric approach is recommended. A literature review of existing structural health monitoring concepts reveals some progress in this direction but highlights that most system designs focus on hardware architecture and technical capabilities. This paper reviews existing structural monitoring systems and the objectives of structural monitoring in general and proposes an interdisciplinary design process with a user-centric focus for structural monitoring systems of the future.