“Can metaphors be designed?” asks Michael Erard. They can—and they are:
In the 1960s, the US philosopher Donald Schön spent some time at the consulting firm Arthur D Little (he eventually became a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology nearby). He was working with product researchers trying to figure out why a new paintbrush design with synthetic bristles didn’t apply paint smoothly. As Schön related it later, someone in the group suddenly said: ‘A paintbrush is a kind of pump!’
Erard admits that the idea of paintbrush-as-pump isn’t beautiful, but it’s useful. And that’s the point of metaphor design.
Read more over at Aeon magazine.
