Metaphors Advantages and Disadvantages

Metaphors are used in different kind of interactive products in order to easily understand what a product is for and how to use it. 

There are the interface metaphors like the desktop used in computers to metaphor the meaning of having a virtual desktop which consists of other virtual metaphors illustrated in Figure 1 as the traditional desktop. 

Therefore it is used for visualising a process for example the Pinterest application which is actually a virtual board where someone can pin, like in real life, images and posts (Rogers et al 2011).

Figure 1: Metaphors

The advantages of using metaphors are:

• Firstly the opportunity of the individual to learn the systems and products easier. 
• Secondly it helps the users to comprehend the model applied. 
• Finally due to their innovation it expands the number of active users’ range (Rogers et al 2011).

The disadvantages are:

• Metaphors break the cultural protocols. 
• It implements conflict with the design principles and it can oblige designers on how to conceptualise a problem. 
• It averts the user to use computers without the use of metaphors. 
• It limits the imagination and it leads the designers to sometimes use bad existing designs into new products (Rogers et al 2011).

References:

Rogers, Y., Preece, J. & Sharp, H., 2011. Interaction Design: Beyond Human - Computer Interaction. 3rd ed. s.l.:Wiley.