This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Interface metaphor" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR(August 2011) (Learn how and when to remove this message)
In user interface design, an interface metaphor is a set of user interface visuals, actions and procedures that exploit specific knowledge that users already have of other domains. The purpose of the interface metaphor is to give the user instantaneous knowledge about how to interact with the user interface. They are designed to be similar to physical entities but also have their own properties (e.g., desktop metaphor and web portals). They can be based on an activity, an object (skeuomorph), or a combination of both and work with users' familiar knowledge to help them understand 'the unfamiliar', and placed in the terms so the user may better understand.
An example of an interface metaphor is the file and folder analogy for the file system of an operating system. Another example is the tree view representation of a file system, as in a file manager.
and 18 Related for: Interface metaphor information
In user interface design, an interfacemetaphor is a set of user interface visuals, actions and procedures that exploit specific knowledge that users already...
computing, the desktop metaphor is an interfacemetaphor which is a set of unifying concepts used by graphical user interfaces to help users interact...
the desktop metaphor by making tasks, not files, the primary unit of interaction. Text-based user interfaces (TUIs) are user interfaces which interact...
A graphical user interface, or GUI (/ˈɡuːi/ GOO-ee), is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical...
Cognitive metaphor refers to certain kinds of metaphors. The same as a Conceptual metaphor in cognitive science An approach to an Interfacemetaphor in computing...
3½-inch floppy disk became an interfacemetaphor for saving data. The floppy disk symbol is still used by software on user-interface elements related to saving...
the desktop metaphor made of a bundle of programs running on top of a computer operating system that share a common graphical user interface (GUI), sometimes...
A notebook interface or computational notebook is a virtual notebook environment used for literate programming, a method of writing computer programs...
computing, a zooming user interface or zoomable user interface (ZUI, pronounced zoo-ee) is a type of graphical user interface (GUI) where users can change...
floating icon to be dropped into a destination a rich notebook user interfacemetaphor: Documents existed as pages in a notebook with tabs (this was not...
real-world metaphors for objects and actions can make it easier for a user to learn and use an interface (some might say that the interface is more natural...
and was the first computer to demonstrate the desktop metaphor and graphical user interface (GUI). It was not a commercial product, but several thousand...
instantly jump in and out of view, which is incongruent with the interfacemetaphor (and with a physical office setting). Some systems like the Classic...
Series 60). S60 was designed to be manipulated by a keyboard-like interfacemetaphor, such as the ~15-key augmented telephone keypad, or the mini-QWERTY...
and easier for gamers. Due to their similarity to the WIMP desktop metaphorinterface for which mice were originally designed, and to their own tabletop...
(Workbench). The icon on the desktop, taken from the .info itself, is the interfacemetaphor through which the user interacts both with the project itself and...
personal computer designed to fit on a desk Desktop metaphor, a style of graphical user interface modeled after a physical work surface Desktop environment...
(GUI). Mann referred to this work as "natural user interfaces", "Direct User Interfaces", and "metaphor-free computing". Mann's EyeTap technology typically...