Other Metaphors

The Siemens Phönix Office is a metaphor which extends the desktop to an office. It runs on Windows 3.x and Windows 95 and came preinstalled with Simens Nixdorf computers.⁶⁰. The metaphor included a desktop with utilities (e.g. a clock), a shelf (where the applications were represented as books), and, depending on the hardware configuration, a hifi (if the computer had a sound card) or a TV set (if there was a TV card in the computer).
Another metaphor that has not made it to the same level of implementation but which was widely discussed, is the plain-paper metaphor (Mountford 26). In contrast to the desktop metaphor, which forces the user to differentiate his tasks into seperate tasks and to perform them in different environments (taking the tasks to the tools), the plain-paper metaphor brings the tools to the task. One example for this kind of metaphor, albeit not consequent in every case, are Krause's interfaces, mostly developed for applications by MetaCreations, which avoid the use of standard interfaces provided by the operating systems (see Figure 9 for an example).
Yet another metaphor is a game in which a user administrates a system (see http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/avr-28.10.99-000/). Processes are not killed by the comand "kill" but by "shooting" them in a virtual environment.

 

Figure 9: MetaCreation PhotoSoap

However, since all of the above mentioned metaphors (except for the game metaphor) require the same kind of background knowledge, they could be regarded as subcategories of one main category, which is the environment of an office. While the concept of a virtual space in regard to the desktop metaphor has already been outlined above and, at the same time, the office metaphor obviously makes extensive use of this concept, the plain-paper metaphor seems to be limiting for this approach. There are no virtual spaces one could enter, since the users stay in the same environment regardless of their tasks. How could the World Wide Web be integrated in this metaphor? Although the notion of a document should not be restricted to one or more pieces of paper, the space metaphor seems to provide a better environment for understanding the fundamental changes taking place when switching from one program to another.
Nevertheless, since the aforementioned metaphors seem to belong to one main category, it is worth thinking about other categories for which metaphors could be developed (Buxton 407; see also Raskin Down with GUIs!). Since the desktop metaphor was developed in regard to the use of computers, it is difficult to see them in other contexts. The computer could also come in the disguise of an assistant or a butler, but how could the computer's use of a sophisticated typewriter be integrated into this notion? This point will be later referred to when discussing agents.