Models, Metaphors and Paradigms

Interaction models (revisited from last week)

For what Preece et al. call conceptual models based on activities (section 2.3.1), most other authors call interaction styles. Here is a table that compares two sets of terminologies:

Terms on the same row are rough equivalents.

Metaphors (revisited from last week, also from section 2.4)

Metaphors generally exploit meanings (especially semantic relationships) in the physical world to inform a user how to interact with the user interface.

Interaction paradigms (section 2.5)

Generally, these are alternatives to traditional interaction with desktop computers.

• Ubiquitous computing
• Embedded in everyday artifacts
• Pervasive computing
• Seamless integration across computing devices
• Data persists over multiple interactions
• Multimodal interactions
• Tangible bits
• Haptic feedback devices
• Speech recognition
• Gesture and action recognition