Visual Metaphors and Mental Models in Display Design—A Method for Comparing Intangibles

Abstract

Visual metaphors are often used in designing human-computer interfaces for complex systems. In order to be useful, such metaphors must be congruent with users' underlying mental models of system organization or system function. When metaphors fail to be useful in interface design, it is difficult to know whether a better metaphor would improve performance or whether the use of a visual metaphor is, in general, inappropriate for the application. A method is needed to assess the congruence between users' conceptual models of a complex process and the visual metaphor used to represent that process, independent of users' performance with the interface. We developed and applied such a method as part of an evaluation of a user coach for a manpower planning application. The results indicate a high degree of congruence between the visual metaphor implemented in the interface and the conceptual features of the manpower planning process.