Comments on: 5 Reasons Why Metaphors Can Improve the User Experience

By: Jonathan Horne

Jonathan Horne — Thu, 31 May 2012 08:27:04 +0000

Visual metaphors are also important for people who process information in different mediums. I for example am hopeless at reading text, however can interpret images and put the story together much quicker visually.

Good design should take into account different ways of processing information.

By: Dee

Dee — Sat, 19 May 2012 13:43:11 +0000

User experience should be companies’ #1 priority. You shared some excellent examples of creativity. Some of them really help UX, some just trigger emotions.

Metaphors have to be used carefully – they should be both tightly connected with the theme of the website and be straightforward. No one really has the time to sit and consider what the webmaster wanted to ‘say’

By: Danielle Chutinthranond

Danielle Chutinthranond — Fri, 18 May 2012 18:42:48 +0000

Thanks for the cool links. I enjoyed looking at these websites.

I don’t agree that the Minute Race is an effective metaphor that creates a better user experience. UX to me is about empowering the user through clean and clear designs that ultimately have a calming effect. The timer seems like a gimmick and trick, something that’s better grouped with advertising and marketing. “Motivating” the user seems like a euphemism for bullying them into giving up their email addresses.

UX Designer/Dev

By: Rachael

Rachael — Wed, 16 May 2012 08:10:59 +0000

There are some great examples here of metaphors used in web designs. I think its something you have to be careful with whilst its creative to use something else to express your company’s message/something that you want the user to do – I think it’s important that they are kept quite obvious, and not to use too many through the design.

To me the log in form and knock knock, they are both nice designs, but neither of these are really metaphors, if the comments you give for these designs are metaphors then most of the websites you see are a metaphor for one thing or another!

By: John

John — Mon, 14 May 2012 09:51:30 +0000

I agree that metaphors can improve the user experience but at the same time you have to be very creative and clever to find the best metaphors, otherwise they won’t do the trick!

By: Sabina

Sabina — Mon, 14 May 2012 08:13:12 +0000

Thanks everyone for sharing your thoughts on this!

I totally agree that ‘real world’ metaphors need to be used carefully and at times they might not be the best choice for your UI.

However sometimes they work just fine in order to explain something. For example the error 404 message doesn’t actually explain the problem, but still it offers a sufficient explanation of what happened to most people. At other times, they offer a great way to get to people emotionally.

Bottom line, I think metaphors work great to improve your user experience. They might not always be the best choice regarding the usability.

At times they might not be extremely helpful to explain how something works, but I do believe that they can improve the user experience.

By: Anita

Anita — Mon, 14 May 2012 06:30:50 +0000

Metaphors and mental models are great – but as earlier commenters have mentioned they have to fit to be effective.

The huwshimi 404 page is charming – but is it helpful?
Maybe the website’s visitors are all cool and hip enough to recognize the metaphor and the humour. But if they are not the page is just another internet weird thing. It doesn’t say what has happened and it doesn’t offer a solution (even going back to the home page.) It would be a litte more explicable if the huwshimi site had a Japanese them running through it, but it doesn’t asfaics.

By: Robin Jennings

Robin Jennings — Sun, 13 May 2012 03:23:29 +0000

Standing out from the crowd is so important and using metaphors to do this can really work as discussed above.

The vast majority of my clients don’t know what a 404 error is so that’s an area that needs major improvement on almost all websites.

By: Adam Turner

Adam Turner — Sat, 12 May 2012 21:06:20 +0000

Great article! I’m definitely going to try and find ways to work more metaphors into my websites…

Lol, it one of those things when someone points it out to you, you feel stupid for not noticing it before.

By: Dainis Graveris

Dainis Graveris — Sat, 12 May 2012 20:43:02 +0000

Glad to see article here after long time! Very interesting article and yes, it’s all about how we differentiate from others, and using metaphors is one of the ways we can do it. You could also mention having mascots :)