Interaction designers consider the use of metaphors as an important principle when creating good interfaces. This is not something new. The most notable use of metaphor was when Xerox introduced the ‘Desktop’ metaphor in early 70′s. My personal favorite is the use of ‘Trash Can’ metaphor in Macintosh. The Role of metaphors in interaction design was well explained by Dan Saffer. He writes – “Metaphors help us to conceive and understand abstract concepts, usually by making reference to more concrete objects.”
So the role of a metaphor is to explain something to a user in a easy meaningful way. A way to which the users can relate to. But is this approach still used in recent web companies? Let’s take the example of Twitter. ‘Tweet’ is one of the worst metaphor ever. When I update my friends with some information, I never think of ‘making a sound like a small bird’. But would Twitter be as successful as it is today if it had just used the metaphor ‘Status Update’ or ‘Update’ like most networks out there? Maybe, or maybe not. But the metaphor ‘tweet’ did create a unique brand for Twitter, which clearly differentiated it from other social networks, and added to its success.
With so many startups emerging, especially in social web, and everyone trying to be different from others, the trend is more towards using hybrid metaphors. The role of a metaphor is no longer just to describe an action to a user but also to create an identity for the product.
