Revisiting Graspable User Interfaces - A Design Process for Developing User Interface Metaphors.

The use of metaphors can support the understanding of novel interfaces approaches and increase the ease of use. But the design of novel holistic and adaptable metaphors is still challenging for interface designers. While most literature provides no systematic instruction for metaphor design or recommend to use a repertoire of known metaphors, we present a method that focuses on the generation of new metaphors based on the analysis and abstraction of everyday objects and the separate analysis of the given problem domain. Several methods of the field of human-computer interaction and traditional design support these analyzes. The methods presented in this paper are suitable especially for graspable user interfaces and illustrated by examples from several workshops.