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Metaphor Engineering: a Participatory Approach

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Part of the book series: Research Reports ESPRIT ((3231,volume 1))

Abstract

A method for ‘metaphor engineering’ is introduced in the context of participatory multimedia design. Our hypothesis, that adults talk to children more with a metaphorical language than to other adults, was empirically verified. Especially male adults do not qualify for the job as metaphor engineers. Metaphors are powerful, but not sufficient to come up with a good interface. Single, over-detailed metaphors can be too restrictive and unwieldy. Effective interface metaphors often evolve over time through design, evaluation and redesign. The approach presented in this paper guarantees that the starting point of the design cycles can be optimised.

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© 1995 ECSC-EC-EAEC, Brussels-Luxembourg

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Rauterberg, M., Hof, M. (1995). Metaphor Engineering: a Participatory Approach. In: Schuler, W., Hannemann, J., Streitz, N. (eds) Designing User Interfaces for Hypermedia. Research Reports ESPRIT, vol 1. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-45743-2_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-45743-2_7

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-58489-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-45743-2

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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