Metaphors for Interface Design

Computer system designers and computer users frequently utilize metaphors as organizing structures for dealing with the complexity of behavior of humancomputer interfaces. This paper considers four metaphors concerning the mode of interaction between user and machine the conversation metaphor, the declaration metphor, the model world metaphor and the collaborative manipulation metaphor. It is argued that the key to the functional properties of an interface lie in the reference relations between the expressions in the interface language and the things to which the expressions refer. The ways in which such metaphors are suggested by advances in IO technology and the ways they constrain the possibilities we see in technology are discussed. Each of the metaphors discussed promotes a particular type of reference relation. Furthermore, because the computer is a medium in which types of reference relations that are not possible in ordinary language can be realized, the space of interface metaphors is quite likely much larger than we presently imagine it to be. Keywords Human- machine interfaces Speech act theory, Metaphor and thought.