Metaphor why is it used

Therefore, there are no visual interfaces and affordances. The physical affordance is the shape of the bench, such as the high and low positions of the seat.

The shapes allow users to decide their sitting position and posture. The robotic suitcase Travelmate Robotics , Figure 7C , shows an everyday object that is mapped to a physical robot. The interface types are physical objects and mobile, which is an automatic system that consists of sensors and mechanical components.

The affordance and signifier is the LED lighting that indicates the moving direction. In the robot metaphor, the examples depend on the sensing type of interaction and the robot type of interface, since the major characteristic of the robot metaphor is a physical automation system for achieving certain functions. The affordances in the robot metaphor are physical and depend on the embodied interactions used and their shapes. A smart environment with embodied interaction is a friend in the sense that the interaction centers around advising and supporting the users.

Interactions based on this metaphor have the role of supporting activities within a specific context. The primary characteristic of this kind of interaction is an open-ended structure and outcome, which are characterized by meandering interaction.

This metaphor emphasizes conversation and the perspective of a friend being offered. It reflects research in personification, effect, and artificial intelligence as well as co-learning over time. The friend metaphor represents conversational interaction, which involves conversing and exploring types of interaction that reflect a human-like manner. It includes the interface types of speech and multimodal. Affordances and signifiers for this metaphor differ from traditional affordances and signifiers that mostly focus on the shape of a familiar object as a visual cue.

Instead, this metaphor uses speaking manner e. In this case, affordances are the voice responses of Alexa such as communicating information and instructions by speaking.

Figure 8. Embodied interaction designs in friend metaphor. The Viewpoints AI installation, Figure 8B , is a participatory interactive installation that allows humans to collaborate with a virtual agent to improvise movement-based performance pieces together in real time Jacob and Magerko, The virtual agent analyzes participant movements and improvises responses based on past interactions with people. In this case, the AI agent is mapped to a friend to act as a dance partner and co-creative performer.

The interaction type of this example is that of exploring, which explores the movements of a virtual agent, including physical and spatial movements. Although it uses the exploring type of interaction, the interaction is analogous with conversing in terms of communicating through dancing and co-creating performance.

The interface types are mid-air gestures and shareable display. The affordances are bodily movements of the virtual agent e. Gatebox Gatebox , displayed in Figure 8C , is a virtual home assistant that uses a hologram and is an example of virtual character—type human-like manner. Unlike the first two examples, the virtual character of Gatebox uses a combination of speech interaction and whole-body actions like an actual person. In this case, the bodily actions of the virtual character can play an important role as an affordance, for instance, having teatime with the user.

In addition, the virtual character can respond to and send a text message to the user. Gatebox uses a conversing type of interaction. However, it also uses a more emotional human-like manner based on the interface type, while Amazon Echo uses only speech interaction with functional purposes in a human-like manner. Gatebox uses mixed reality with a hologram as an embodied interface, and the technique used is a multimodal interface including speech and display. Gatebox involves many different affordances since it uses a visual and emotional assistant.

The virtual assistant can gesture and speak emotionally to induce a user action. The gestures make the user greet the assistant, look at the information, and take an action according to that information. In the case of the friend metaphor, the interaction type should be conversing since the essential characteristic of the friend metaphor is a natural dialog. In the examples given, speech is the common interface type for conversing interaction.

However, gestures can be also considered for an interface type such as dancing. Another aspect of the interface type is visual elements such as the visual assistant of Gatebox. In addition, both of the examples are home device types of appliances. However, potential designs can be embedded into building components such as walls, windows, and doors. Lastly, the use of visual assistants shows potential affordances that involve the emotional aspect of a human-like manner. Further research is needed for identifying potential affordances.

In order to explore the effect of the conceptual metaphors in design scenarios, we used the conceptual metaphors in educational settings. In this section, we describe the factors that influence adopting the metaphors for new designs and example designs that the students created using the metaphors. The course is an active learning course that encourages learning through class activities. We developed a class activity to explore Design by Metaphor in three courses: summer 15 students , fall for undergraduate students 88 students , and fall for graduate students 43 students.

We also introduced the three conceptual metaphors with example designs and design elements associated with each metaphor. The class activity is to identify signifiers, affordances, and interaction modalities in a given interactive design and describe which metaphor could be used to describe the design.

For the activity, the students were given the three metaphors device, robot, friend and 18 examples of HCI designs in a template file including the definition of the three conceptual metaphors and a picture of each of the 18 example interaction designs.

The 18 example designs for the activity include various types of interface and interaction i. We selected the examples to represent different types of interaction, interface, modality, material, and appearance of design elements.

In the activity submissions, the students showed distinct patterns for mapping between the metaphors and design examples. The friend metaphor was predominantly mapped to various AI assistants e. Amazon Echo, Pillo, Gatebox. These patterns are consistent with the metaphorical framework that we identified from the review of existing embodied interaction designs shown in Table 1.

In other words, the device metaphor is strongly associated with direct manipulation, the robot metaphor involves automated features and physical movements, and the friend metaphor reflects conversational interaction and a human-like manner.

Another interesting pattern is that some design examples were mapped to multiple metaphors. In these cases, the design examples mostly use multimodal interaction. For example, most students mapped either the robot metaphor or the friend metaphor to a personal assistant using GUI, touch, and speech interaction e.

Google Assistant app. Some students selected both the robot and the friend metaphor when mapping specific design factors to each metaphor. We also identified the themes that the students described in mapping a design example to one of the metaphors. We identified three emerging themes from the answers to the question: why did you select a specific metaphor for the signifiers, affordances, and modalities you found in the design example?

The three emerging themes are: signifier and affordance, interaction modality, and purpose of design. The students mostly focused on signifier and affordance and interaction modality in the device metaphor. That means when the metaphor is device, they focused on what the interface looks like and how it is controlled as a device.

In the robot metaphor, the students mostly focused on interaction modality. In other words, they focused on the sensing type of interaction with automated features and physical movements of the robot metaphor. For the friend metaphor, the students focused on Purpose of Design associated with the concept of human-like manner and Interaction Modality associated with conversational interaction. In order to study how designers apply the three metaphors to develop their conceptual design, we used the three metaphors in an interaction design studio course.

The course is a studio approach to teaching topics in interaction design. Aspects of interaction design taught in the studio include: gesture-based interaction, tangible interaction, large public display interaction, tabletop interaction, multi-touch tablet interaction, and human—robot interaction. The topic of the design studio for the semester was metaphorical design for human—building interaction, and the design project focused on designing interactive buildings.

The design project was a team project, and each team consisted of three to four students. During the semester, the students developed their design concepts based on the conceptual metaphors, implemented the prototype, and evaluated the prototype. We introduced metaphorical design and examples of metaphors in HCI at the beginning of the semester. We also introduced the three metaphorical concepts for HBI with examples, and the students performed precedent studies associated with each metaphorical concept during the first 3 weeks.

After that, we assigned one of the metaphors device, robot, or friend that the students were asked to use when developing their design in their team project.

There were six design teams, and we assigned each metaphor to two teams: two teams for the device metaphor, two teams for the robot metaphor, and two teams for the friend metaphor. The students used the assigned metaphorical concept and interaction type, interface type, and affordance in the design process as a framework for framing their conceptual design.

In this section, we describe three design concepts that the students created and how the students applied each metaphor to develop their design concept. This design concept expanded the concept of an answering machine to an office door as a device.

The HCI techniques used for this design concept are:. This design concept presents a good example of metaphorical design in terms of mapping an existing concept of a device to a building component through analogical reasoning.

The design team identified a novel function from an answering machine, and the answering machine was transferred to an office building. The design concept also shows a novel behavior for potential smart environments through the affordances and signifiers. The affordances and signifiers are a combination of physical and digital affordances that represent the characteristics of a door and an answering machine.

As a result, designing the interaction model was strongly influenced by the metaphorical reference. The design concept influenced by the robot metaphor is an interactive door for a classroom that provides class information. The interactive door detects students and displays the class information e. The emoji is a major design factor that indicates the class status. The design team focused on two aspects to adopt the robot metaphor: the automated sensing and the visual interface for the system.

While the automated features represent the characteristics of the robot metaphor, the emoji visualization makes the design look more like a typical robot. The design concept influenced by the friend metaphor is a smart speaker, an office assistant called Pluto, for a meeting room. The smart speaker, which has a 3D-printed alien shape, is a voice-activated recording system for a meeting room.

The used HCI techniques for this design concept are:. The design concept is similar to existing smart speakers such as Amazon Echo. However, this design shows an example of an embedded AI assistant in a built environment focusing on the meeting activities and the meeting space.

That means the smart speaker has a clearer role as an office assistant for the meeting room, while existing smart speakers play more universal roles, mostly focusing on the smart home. Another aspect in adopting the friend metaphor in this design concept is the shape of the smart speaker.

As a result, the combination of speech interaction, the physical shape of the design, and the signifier make the design more like a friend through personification of the interactive system. The three metaphorical concepts we present provide distinct design spaces based on the characteristics of each metaphorical concept and the HCI techniques associated with each metaphorical concept. The metaphorical concepts provide a conceptual framing for a design, and the HCI techniques provide a technical framing that facilitates the exploration of the design space in a practical way.

Each metaphorical concept thus can guide a design to different concepts for the same purpose or the same function through the metaphorical framework. In this section, we describe how a specific design for smart environments can be conceptualized differently by the different metaphorical concepts.

The smart home and energy conservation are common examples for smart environments. Many smart home apps and smart devices provide similar functions for energy saving such as managing room temperature, but they use different interactions and interfaces.

We describe how each metaphorical concept can frame designing a smart room for energy conservation as an example. We apply the same design goals and functions to the three metaphorical designs for the smart room design. The design goals are saving energy and satisfying environmental comfort.

The functions are managing energy consumption, controlling room temperature, controlling lighting, and controlling shading. Smart room as device. The device metaphor for smart environments provides the conceptual space for easy control in the built environment. In order to achieve the design goals and the functions, this conceptual space specifies the instruction type of interaction and includes possible interface types focusing on how to realize easy control.

To be specific, information visualization, sharable, display, and mobile are possible interface types to achieve the function of managing energy consumption. For the function of controlling room temperature, lighting, and shading, GUI, TUI, touch, mid-air gesture, and mobile are possible interface types.

While interface types frame a technical solution, affordances and signifiers guide detailed designs. For instance, a dashboard design, icons, switches, dials, buttons, and sliders can be applied to the information visualization for indicating the energy consumption as a digital affordance. Vibrating blinds, flickering bulbs, beep sounds, and different colors of LED indicator on the wall can indicate a certain energy status and afford a user action to save energy as a physical affordance.

The affordances associated with the device metaphor also help to design user actions e. Smart room as robot. The robot metaphor for smart environments captures the design space for autonomous features of smart environments. These expanded functions then are transferred to specific system actions based on the sensing and exploring types of interaction.

The expected system actions enable a personalized setting for providing comfort and optimizing environmental conditions for saving energy such as automatic changes of blinds and temperature. The physical system actions make the smart room a robotic building component. In this case, the design does not emphasize affordances since it does not require intentional user actions.

Smart room as friend. This metaphorical reasoning can be applied to a smart room e. The interaction types associated with the friend metaphor are conversing and exploring.

In this case, the user saves energy and controls the environment through conversational interaction with the personified room. Selecting interface types for the friend metaphor depends on the visibility of the virtual character. For the personification of the environment, the smart room design can use different metaphorical references for the role of the friend e.

The role of the friend influences the design of the virtual character and the signifiers for the affordances e. Metaphors provide a common perspective for characterizing new designs in HCI. Metaphors assist in forming a common mental model for new interactive designs that support designers in creating novel interaction experiences. Embodied interaction is an integral aspect of smart environments due to the scale of the environment. As recent embodied interactions increasingly expand to include new technologies with multimodal interaction, smart environments provide potential design spaces that are yet to be fully explored and understood.

Characterizing smart environments with embodied interaction by using conceptual metaphors can be a new foundation for a theoretical and methodological framework to understand and discover the potential design spaces for smart environments.

In this paper, we focus on how people interact with the built environment, while many architects focus on how advances in technology can improve the quality of the built environment using automation. We present three metaphorical concepts that enable new ways of designing smart environments: device, robot, and friend. A critical review of existing embodied interaction designs using the three metaphorical concepts with HCI techniques provides a framework for characterizing design spaces for smart environments.

We reviewed 24 existing embodied interaction designs that represent various interaction modalities for embodied interaction. The analysis shows that each metaphorical concept refers to distinct interaction types, interface types, and affordances, which creates distinct design spaces for smart environments. We found that the device metaphor is associated with instructing, manipulating, and exploring types of interaction.

The affordances and signifiers for the device metaphor use generalized GUIs and physical shapes of an interface to make the designs look like a physical device. While the device metaphor focuses on direct manipulation, the robot metaphor focuses on automated features using exploring and sensing types of interaction.

The interface types associated with the robot metaphor are robot, appliance, ambient device, and OUI with automation. The friend metaphor reflects conversational interaction and a human-like manner based on the personification of the interactive system, while the device and the robot metaphor reflect functional aspects of the artifact. The interaction types for the friend metaphor thus include conversing and exploring.

The primary interface type for the conversing type of interaction is speech, but it can be expanded to many other interface modalities with dialog features and applications such as appliances and wearable devices. The affordances and signifiers for the friend metaphor are unique and interesting in the sense that it uses speaking instruction, emotional speech, tone, pace, pitch of speech and actions of a virtual assistant associated with physical or graphical shapes.

Identifying new affordances and signifiers for the friend metaphor is a topic for research on novel interaction designs for smart environments. The educational experiences in which we presented the three metaphorical concepts show the effect of the conceptual metaphors on recognizing affordances in smart environments and on designing new smart environments.

That means the metaphorical concepts can provide a sharable mental model for new designs. We also identified the influential factors in adopting each metaphor: signifier and affordance and interaction modality in the device metaphor, interaction modality in the robot metaphor, and purpose of design and interaction modality in the friend metaphor.

Metaphors are illustrations that make a strong point by comparing two things you wouldn't necessarily pair together. Just as there are many ways to paint metaphorical pictures, there are many different types of metaphors. Popular forms include. From elementary school children to professional authors and public speakers, everyone needs to understand what metaphors are and how they can be used to enhance written and spoken communication.

There are many metaphor examples for kids that can help young learners understand and discover how to use metaphors. Expand your knowledge by discovering the difference between metaphor, analogy and simile.

Then, it's time to make sure you understand the difference between idiom vs. All rights reserved. Metaphor Meaning M etaphors are figures of speech that are not true in a literal way. Purpose of Metaphors: Illustrated Comparisons Metaphors are used in communication to help illustrate or explain something by comparing it to something else.

Metaphors serve several functions: help people vividly visualize unfamiliar concepts explain unfamiliar situations meaningfully add variety and interest to a person's writing or conversations create strong images and leave lasting impressions pair the intangible with the literal impact readers and audience members. Metaphor Examples Metaphors are illustrations that make a strong point by comparing two things you wouldn't necessarily pair together. Metaphors About Emotions Metaphors can be useful in expressing the extent or type of feelings a person is experiencing.

His words cut deeper than a knife. Words don't materialize into sharp objects. In this metaphor, someone has said something hurtful to another. I feel the stench of failure coming on. Failure isn't fun but it doesn't smell.

So, when this metaphor is used, it means one of life's disappointments is on the way. I'm drowning in a sea of grief.

Here, grief is so overwhelming that the person feels helpless, like they're being pulled underwater. I'm feeling blue. Until we become like the little girl in Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, none of us are likely to turn as blue as a blueberry. This metaphor means someone is sad. She's going through a rollercoaster of emotions. Our emotions can't take a ride on a rollercoaster. This metaphor simply means the person's going through a lot of different moods.

Metaphors Describing Behavior Metaphors are often used to describe behavior. I think he's about to fade off to sleep. Fortunately, none of us fade into thin air when we fall asleep. This expression simply means that someone has drifted into a state of slumber. He really flared up my temper. When someone flares up your temper, flames don't spew out of your body, you're just deeply angry. He reeks of infidelity. When this is said about a cheating partner, it doesn't mean there's an actual odor.

View all natural wonders worksheets. View all landmark worksheets. View all US state worksheets. View all country worksheets. View all Seasonal worksheets. View all mammal worksheets. View all marine life worksheets. View all insect worksheets. View all Bird worksheets. View all natural world worksheets. View all earth science worksheets. View all biology worksheets.

View all space worksheets. View all science worksheets. View all animal worksheets. View all Addition Worksheets. View all Numbers Worksheets. View all Money Worksheets. A metaphor is a word or phrase used to describe something as if it was something else. Instead, a metaphor is simply a statement where you are saying that one thing is another. Take a look at the example of a metaphor in the speech bubble above.