Applying metaphors in interface design of a product helps the user to set some expectations about its utility and performance. An example: the desktop.
Metaphors
The use of metaphors appropriate interface design, facilitates and accelerates learning performance of a product.
Similarities with other mechanisms and processes known to the user to apply what they already know the elements and relationships within a domain may not be familiar as a web application or multimedia.
The most traditional desktop with icons representing folders and documents.
Metaphors help users quickly understand how to move an interactive product.
Characteristics of a good metaphor
If the goal of a product is being used efficiently, some of the characteristics to be considered are:
Must be consistently applied on a consistent and solid throughout the system.
Self-explanatory: It should give the user know the possible actions at every moment.
Parties must make visible and invisible to the user processes, including the conceptual model of the system of alternative actions and results of operations.
Should clearly inform the user about the current state of the system and the consequences of their actions.
Do not overwhelm the user with superfluous or unnecessary information.
Types of metaphors
Organizational metaphors
They are based on the existing structure of a group, system or organization.
For example, a site of a supermarket can be grouped by departments or sections such as supermarkets “physical”. Bakers, butchers, hygiene, cleanliness … in this way, the user applies his knowledge of real life to the website and can start to move.
It is important that you find meaningful and useful to the metaphor: if a shopping site, it is desirable to organize, reflecting the Company’s corporate structure, which is something the user does not understand and also will be useless in task of buying.
Functional Metaphors
They rely on tasks or functions the user can perform in their daily lives.
Example: Adobe Photoshop or MS Word and in general all the programs running under windows systems have the functions Copy, Cut and Paste, which allow the user to understand how you can reuse many of their work in the same or different applications.
Visual metaphors
They are based on graphic elements familiar to most people.
For example, a music site where users can listen to songs, they can provide three icons “Play” “Pause” and “Stop”, which is familiar in all CD players, DVD, etc …
Using metaphors is not designed with “style”
It is necessary to help users understand what the system offers a mixture or avoiding the use of inappropriate metaphors.
Many designers confuse the fact of applying metaphors in his work with a modern design or groundbreaking.
It’s best when dispensed metaphors can mislead the user unless this “estrangement” is one of the objectives of the system as virtual environments, gaming and / or learning in the exploration of great prominence.
