The Role of Metaphor in Interaction Design (Dan Saffer)

DEFINITION

"seeing something as something else" Kenneth Burke

"Our conceptual system is fundamentally metaphoric" Lakoff and Johnson

*- cross-domain mapping!
- mapping abstract concepts to concrete things
- time space states actions causation

INTERACTION DESIGN

Interaction is communication

Use it in a conscious manner in the _design process_ and within products

Tendency to think that problems are fixed (corrected? or unchanging?)

POWER OF METAPHOR

"Things are selected for attention and named in such a way as to fit the frame constructed for the situation." Schoen
- tenement as "blight" as "folk community"
- Jews as "vermin"

METAPHOR TOOLS

*Metaphor as bridging/communication mechanism
- Designers of chemist logbook and chemists used process of Making Tea as a common language/domain

Metaphor as innovation tool
- new ideas are almost always the product of juxtaposition (Nixon and Elvis)

*Metaphor as Sales tool
- important part of the design process is selling ideas to those who will implement and fund them
- shared metaphors bring a team together, keep project vision intact

Metaphor as mediator between computer and human
- means to understand complex digital devices

*THE DESIGN PROCESS IS A STORY

METAPHOR IN PRODUCTS
- Ryukyu ALIVE: info space as galaxy
- Artifacts of the Presence Era: data is geology

*Metaphors give us boundaries
- w/o boundaries, things are difficult to comprehend and reason about

Moving through space and time
- defining problem space and change

*Metaphors can endow machines w/ human-like characteristics, making them more approachable and usable

Introducing new concepts to users
- computer as programming tool to desktop
- TiVo and VCR changed shows from streams to commodities

CRITICISM

Metaphors are misleading
- MS BOB, computer as house

do not scale well,
- mapping abstract directly to physical is a difficult thing to do (can you sweep PC desktop clean?)

degrade over time
- do we still think of desktop?

overused
- can be hindrance to more advanced users

BUT DON'T THROW IT OUT

We can't help using it.

Limited ways to change perspective
- metaphor is one of the most powerful ways

Too powerful to ignore

Design is about invention
- invention = juxtaposition, metaphor = juxtaposition, therefore invention = metaphor (Heh. Nice syllogism.)


USING

- use to find hidden characteristics of content
- fit the metaphor to the content, not the other way around
- be aware of the cultural and contextual properties of metaphor
- choose metaphors that scale appropriately (hard to do)

*A tool to change behavior


DISCUSSION

- Lakoff book
- Lakoff has online list of thousands of metaphors
- metaphor for focused use, "explosion of meaning that dissipates rapidly" (does it break down because we expect it to do too much?)
- metaphor extended becomes "language"?