... thought and action (Lakoff & Johnson 1980, p3) Many teachers have used metaphor and analogy to facilitate their pupils learning and indeed analogy seems to be a central aspect of learning. Metaphors can be distinguished from models by the partial nature of the correspondence between the old and new concept. What is then the relevance of metaphor to human-computer interaction? A significant interest in HCI is controlling system complexity. This affects the learnability and ease of use of a system and consequently its acceptance by users. If a system is not accepted by users then in many ways it is a failure. There are different approaches to reducing system complexity and improving learnability and usability: firstly the number of actions the user has to execute and the number of processes and concepts to be remembered can be reduced; alternatively, instead of reducing the initial complexity designers could increase the initial ...

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