Research On Usability Design Of Interface Icons Based On Metaphor

With the rapid development of human-computer interaction technology and the popularity of smart terminals,interactive interface design has shown the development trend of intuition and emotionality,and at the same time,there is an urgent need for innovation in both theory and practice.Metaphor,as a creative way of thinking,has been applied in interface design to better respond to the development needs of interface design.However,the concept and nature of metaphor in interface design are not clear,and there is a lack of sufficient theoretical support,resulting in a broad study of metaphor in interface design and no targeted metaphor design strategy.As icons are the common carrier of interface metaphor design,the study investigates the specific icon representation object of different metaphor types in interface design and their influence on usability,taking icons as the object.Firstly,the study starts from the origin of metaphor,finds the common points by sorting out the representative theories in each stage of metaphor research,so as to define the kernel of metaphor and re-examine the metaphor in interface design.Based on the conceptual metaphor theory in metaphor research,the application value and limitation,components and mechanism of action,design method and evaluation method of metaphor in interface design are summarized.Secondly,on the basis of the theory,the hypothesis that different metaphor types are applicable to iconic objects is proposed,namely,figurative metaphor is applicable to figurative nouns;relational metaphor is applicable to indicative actions;abstract metaphor is applicable to non-indicative actions,abstract nouns and states,and the above hypothesis is verified through experiments to derive iconic metaphor correspondence.After that,the icon metaphor correspondence was applied to the actual interface,and three experiments were conducted to modify the icons of figurative metaphor,relational metaphor and abstract metaphor according to the icon metaphor correspondence to investigate their effects on usability.The experimental results show that applying the corresponding metaphorical design to different types of icons can effectively improve the usability of the interface,making the users more effective and efficient in the operation process and more satisfied with the interface.Then,based on the experimental results,the study proposed metaphor-based interface icon design strategies from three perspectives: figurative metaphor,relational metaphor and abstract metaphor,and summarized the main features and specific techniques of each metaphor design method with examples.Finally,the metaphor design strategy is used to optimize the selected products and test and evaluate their usability.The results show that the metaphor design strategy can improve the usability of the interface to a certain extent.