The ubiquitous mouse input device is not metaphoric of anything, but rather is learned idiomatically.
The psychological reality of cognitive basis of metaphors-evidence from the spatial metaphoric representation of time;
Ironically, many of the familiar GUI elements that are often thought of as metaphoric are actually idiomatic. Artifacts like resizable windows and endlessly nested file folders are not really metaphoric—they have no parallel in the real world.
There are three dominant paradigms in the conceptual and visual design of user interfaces: implementation-centric, metaphoric, and idiomatic.
This will happen regardless of how polite, cute, visually metaphoric, anthropomorphic, or full of interesting content the software is.
It even has a faint but resonant metaphoric trace: that of someone handing you an important note.
Others have made extensive folkloric and metaphoric use of animals, with the cast of characters tuned to suit local reality and pedagogical need.
This is a necessity, because most idioms don’t have metaphoric meaning at all, and the stories behind most others were lost ages ago. Graphical interfaces are largely idiomatic
We rejected the overly anthropomorphic servers and chose a metaphoric style for our first color icon: a literal server serving information on a silver platter.
The horizontal line is broken at the midpoint, where a stack of Cor-Ten steel rises above the flat roof like a metaphoric mountain peak.
They are metaphoric, almost like dreams, with the device of repetition used like a refrain or a chorus for both thematic emphasis and internal rhythm.
It is a tour de force of metaphoric design. All the navigation in the interface, and most other interactions as well, were subordinated to the maintenance of spatial and physical metaphors.
Unfortunately, as is the case with many metaphoric user interfaces, it functions a bit differently than its real world analog, which has the potential to create cognitive friction on the part of users.
The field of user-interface design progressed from a heavy focus on technology (implementation) to an equally heavy focus on metaphor. There is ample evidence of all three paradigms in contemporary software design, even though the metaphoric paradigm is the only one that has been named and described.
