A Study on Basic Metaphors in Human-Computer Interaction

Abstract

The use of metaphors in the design of human-computer interaction (HCI) has been increasing as the graphic user interfaces (GUIs) have become popular in recent years. The main advantage of using metaphors in HCI design is to utilize and extend the concepts that already exist in computer users' long-term memory, to analog represent the functions and operations of the computer systems and reduce the users' mental workload. Therefore, the efficiency of an HCI and the usability of a computer system may largely determined by the appropriateness of the metaphors used. This study collected and analyzed a number of existing HCI metaphors and developed guidelines for determining basic metaphors that should be used in the design of HCI to maximize the intelligibility and minimize the intended users' mental workload. As a conclusion, basic metaphors should have four important properties: (1) The source of basic metaphors must be from the intended users' knowledge domain. (2) The intelligibility of visual metaphors determines the correctness of the user's responses. (3) The operational features of metaphorical components should be the same as those of metaphor sources. (4) The metaphors used in a specific human-computer interface should be of the same conceptual domain.