{"id":2070,"date":"2016-06-21T11:03:38","date_gmt":"2016-06-21T11:03:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marvel7077.wpengine.com\/?p=2070"},"modified":"2016-06-22T14:20:47","modified_gmt":"2016-06-22T14:20:47","slug":"why-metaphors-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shopjessicabuckley.com\/blog\/why-metaphors-matter\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Metaphors Matter"},"content":{"rendered":"

All the world\u2019s a stage. Organisations are ecosystems. The self is a blank slate. Metaphors like these are illuminating, helping us to see things in a different way. They provide new insight and can even change the way we think.<\/p>\n

Metaphors are more than devices; they\u2019re central to how we understand the world. They don\u2019t belong solely to language, but help us to reason and understand what\u2019s around us. In the influential book Metaphors We Live By<\/em>, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson observe how metaphors are so seeped into the collective consciousness that we use them everyday. Without even thinking about it, we talk about how time is money, affection is warm, hate is cold.<\/p>\n

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\"The way we think, what we experience, and what we do every day is very much a matter of metaphor.\"<\/p><\/span><\/blockquote>\n

Metaphors are useful in design because a large part of the craft is about seeing things in a new light. And when things are seen in a new light, new solutions may reveal themselves. Metaphors do more than cloak something in a poetic veil: like design, they broaden our minds and help us learn how to see<\/a>. What does one thing have to do with another thing? And how best to explain a connection when we make it? Through metaphors, of course.<\/p>\n

Ideas are frustrating because they're hard to manifest into the world - imagination will always be compromised by reality. No exact words will do either, so ideas are equally frustrating to explain. Our mind works in interesting ways. We can find it difficult to grasp something physically, like the universe itself; but when given an abstraction of the physical through metaphors, something clicks into place, and we understand it on a conceptual level. Isn't it both a strange and wonderful thing that we can grasp how love can be deep as the sea? Or how life comes in chapters as if it were a book?<\/p>\n

Metaphors help to add depth <\/em> to the explanation of an idea. All of a sudden, we have a vision. Pinterest is a \u2018moodboard.\u2019 The original iPod was described as \u20181000 songs in your pocket.\u2019 All our data belongs to this entity called \u2018The Cloud.\u2019 And look at the way we use colour to add meaning and perspective. Green makes us think of nature; blue is more corporate and high-tech<\/a>, think of Linkedin and WordPress; red is urgent and demanding, used profusely on sales days, encouraging us to buy things. We don\u2019t see things as they are, we react to them with an association based on culture, context and character.<\/p>\n

Metaphors, as journalist Michael Erard writes in an article for Aeon<\/a>, are about \u201cassist[ing] understanding.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI see my job as being able to assist understanding. My metaphors close the gap in people\u2019s ability to grasp something, or speed up what they\u2019re already on track to see. I\u2019m not creating fantastical scenes of my own invention or distracting people from what they should be looking at. The windows and doors of the metaphor room are supposed to provide another way of looking at reality.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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A great metaphor can tell us how we might use something.<\/p><\/span><\/blockquote>\n

This new way of looking at reality extends beyond the written word. Metaphors are powerful tools for visual communication too, from pictographs to advertisement. Skeuomorphism<\/a>, which is the application of real life objects to the web, is an example of visual metaphors but in a more literal way. The stuff we see on the web is just a load of pixel made to look like something from the physical world. A button isn\u2019t a button but looks like one because it\u2019s intended to function like the real thing. We\u2019re encouraged to click on it. A magnifying glass lets us know we can zoom in on something. Tabs work just like actual tab documents. One of the earliest metaphors used in interface design is the desktop metaphor<\/a>, in which the computer monitor is treated like the user\u2019s desktop. Objects can be moved around, and we are presented with other desktop essentials like a notepad, folders and a calculator. A favourite metaphor of mine, and less literal, is Google\u2019s \u2018Unable to connect to the Internet' T-Rex, conveying to us that having no wi-fi is like being in the dinosaur age. True that.<\/p>\n