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asserts that one thing is like another. But what is being compared to what?
Now there is a third part to the representation: the simile (say, a represen-
tational phone and address book), the real-world object (a real phone and
address book), and the thing that the representation really is —a bundle of
functionalities that do not necessarily correspond to the operations of the
real-world referent, augmenting it with “magical” powers like the abil-
ity to “search” for a name or number, click on a number and make a call
or send a text message, or display a current photo of the contact that is
automagically updated. This phenomenon is well illustrated in Nelson's
comment, where he never uses the word “folder” at all, but refers to it
as a “disk directory.” The simile becomes a kind of cognitive mediator
between a real-world object and something going on inside the computer.
What Ted misses is that the “disk directory” as presented in a command-
line interface is as much a metaphor within that interface as it is when
presented as a “folder” within the desktop interface; it is a presentation
of information to and a mediator of actions with the user in a medium of
otherwise invisible entities.
What happens to people who are trying to use interface similes? Alas,
they must form mental models of what is going on inside the computer that
incorporate an understanding of all three of these questions (What is the
object being represented? What is the representational object's qualities?
How is the representational object different from the object of the represen-
tation?). In this way, interface “metaphors” can fail to simplify what is go-
ing on; rather, they tend to complicate it. People must explain to themselves
the ways in which the behavior of mimetic objects differs from the behavior
of their real-world counterparts.
To put it another way, the problem with interface metaphors (or simi-
les) is that they often act as indices (or pointers) to the wrong thing: the
internal operations of the computer. John Seely Brown (1986), former head
of Xerox PARC, puts it this way:
. . . it is not enough to simply to try to show the user how the system
is functioning beneath its opaque surfaces; a useful representation must
be cognitively transparent in the sense of facilitating the user's ability to
'grow' a productive mental model of relevant aspects of the system. We
must be careful to separate physical fi delity from cognitive fi delity, rec-
ognizing that an 'accurate' rendition of the system's inner workings does
not necessarily provide the best resource for constructing a clear mental
picture of its central abstractions.
 
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