Handle with care!

Why and how designers

make use of product metaphors
Paul Hekkert and Nazlı Cila, Department of Industrial Design, Faculty of
Industrial Design Engineering, Delft University of Technology, 2628 CE,
Delft, The Netherlands

Metaphors are not only a powerful tool in the hands of a poet; they are also
powerful in the hands of a designer. In this paper we examine (1) several
intentions behind metaphor conception and selection, and (2) consider various
ways a product metaphor can be designed. Whereas both classifications
emphasise the enormous potential metaphors have, we will also attempt to
describe the risks and pitfalls associated with their use. It takes a careful hand to
design a good product metaphor.
Ó 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: metaphor, product design, design knowledge, design activity,

aesthetics

A
few years ago, Apple filed a patent for the selective transfer of files
from one iOS device to another (see Figure 1). The idea was for
the user to ‘pour’ files from, e.g., an iPhone into another device
such as an iPad, as easily as pouring the liquid from one container (a cup)
into another (a bowl). This ‘file sharing as pouring’ is metaphorical. By (visu-
ally, performatively) perceiving the act of pouring as a metaphor for file
sharing, users rapidly and easily understand what to do, and what they are
doingethereby generating one of the surprisingly intuitive product interac-
tions for which Apple is so widely celebrated. Moreover, the metaphorical
‘pouring’ of files is (probably) fun, and many would laud the clever, novel
reference the metaphor rests upon. As this example shows, metaphors are a
powerful means to make a producteor interaction with iteunderstandable
and pleasurable. Designers through the ages have employed metaphors for
an assortment of reasons, admittedly with varying success.

Product metaphorseand other metaphoric mediaeare much more than simple

stylistic devices used by designers who lack originality, as some have argued
(e.g., Djajadiningrat, Overbeeke, & Wensveen, 2000). As we will show, meta-
phorical thinking is a fundamental component of human reason, concept for-
mation and language; the same holds true for ‘design language’. This paper is
Corresponding author:
Paul Hekkert not about how metaphorical or analogical thinking may facilitate idea gener-
p.p.m.hekkert@ ation in the design process. Instead, it deals with metaphors as they appear in a
tudelft.nl final design, i.e. product metaphors. Before presenting our classification of
www.elsevier.com/locate/destud
0142-694X Design Studies 40 (2015) 196e217
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2015.06.007 196
Ó 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Figure 1 A depiction of ‘pouring out’ files from an iPhone to an iPad. (Credit: Patently Apple)

such product metaphors along two dimensions, we will first clarify what (ver-
bal) metaphors are (Section 1) and what makes product metaphors so special
(Section 2). In Section 3, we describe the various intentions designers have
which might prompt them to deploy the communicative power of a metaphor.
In the subsequent section, we list the various available means the designer can
employ to get the metaphorical message across. In section 5, finally, we discuss
what it takes to design a metaphor that is effective, and aesthetically pleasing.
The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that metaphors are omnipresent in de-
sign(s), and, if handled with care, become an indispensable and highly effective
tool for communication.

1 What is a Metaphor?
Metaphors are ways of expressing meaning that depart from the literal (e.g.,
Steen, 2002). In a metaphor, two objects or ideas that are ostensibly different
are brought together because they share an underlying property (Lakoff &
Johnson, 1980). For example, in the linguistic metaphor ‘life is a winding
river’, the meandering, uncertain properties of the riverethe source of the
metaphorehave been associated with lifeethe target of the metaphor. The
salient and concrete properties provided by the image of a ‘winding river’
enhance and deepen our understanding of the concept ‘life’.

Metaphor has long been seen as a purely linguistic tool used by poets to write
about things in ways that might also be expressed literally. This ‘romantic’
view was subjected to a radical shift when the disciplines of linguistics and
psycholinguistics were founded, and they began to tackle metaphors as a
research topic. Since then, there has been growing recognition that the use

Handle with care! 197

 of metaphors is not confined to spoken or written language, but metaphors
underlie how people think, reason, and imagine in everyday life (Gibbs,
1994; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980; Sweetser, 1990; Turner, 1998). This means
that the metaphors we use are an expression of the primary ways in which
we conceptualize the world (El Refaie, 2003): people ‘think’ metaphorically.
People structure and experience many concepts, especially abstract ones such
as time, emotion, and spatial orientation, in terms of metaphor (K€ ovecses,
2010; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980; Pinker, 2007; Reddy, 1979). For example,
when we talk about our heart ‘burning with love’, or claim our computer
is ‘infected with a virus’, or when we feel our boss is ‘looking down’ on us,
we resort to metaphor in order to more fully apprehend the experience or
event. These arguments stress Ortony (1975) claim that ‘metaphors are neces-
sary and not just nice’ (p. 45). Metaphors are present in all fields of human
endeavour.

Realizing that the mechanisms underlying a metaphor exist in the mind inde-
pendently of language has paved the way for studying metaphoric expressions
found in any kind of communication, including nonverbal. As Gibbs (2008)
proudly pointed out in his ‘state-of-the-art’ overview on metaphor, metaphor
research is now as multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary as any topic being
studied in contemporary academia. Scholars from various fields have investi-
gated the functions and meanings of metaphor in relation to art (Aldrich,
1968; Feinstein, 1985; Kennedy, 2008), gestures (Cienki & M€ uller, 2008), mar-
keting (Zaltman & Coulter, 1995), political cartoons (El Refaie, 2003), comics
(Forceville, 2005), mathematics (Lakoff & N un~ez, 2000), music (Zbikowski,
2008), science (Hoffman, Eskridge, & Shelley, 2009), cinema (Carroll, 1996),
and advertising (Forceville, 2002, 2008; Phillips & McQuarrie, 2004).

The reason that metaphor is deemed relevant, and has become an eminent sub-
ject of research in such diverse fields, lies in its power to integrate disparate en-
tities and bring new perspectives into existence by allowing for ‘understanding
and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another’ (Lakoff & Johnson,
1980, p. 3). This is the textbook definition of metaphor, which rightfully turns
up in every academic investigation of the subject. When people bring together
a target and a source, they attempt to match what they know about the source
with what they do not know about the target. In this way, certain aspects of
each are illuminated, others are downplayed, new insights emerge and deeper
levels of meaning are tapped into. For this reason, metaphors are often
referred to as the cognitive instruments used by ‘creative artists’ to build rela-
tionships that urge us see things in a new light (Cupchik, 2003).

2 What is a ‘product Metaphor’?

Product designers are one group of creative artists who frequently resort to
metaphors to enhance products’ meaningfulness and appeal. They may use
metaphors as a tool or method during the design process to help identify,

198 Design Studies Vol 40 No. C September 2015

 frame and solve design problems (Casakin, 2012; Hey, Linsey, Agogino, &
Wood, 2008; Sch€ on, 1979); break away from the limitations imposed by prob-
lem constraints (Casakin, 2007); and justify design decisions (Madsen, 1994).
They might also employ a metaphor to shape the final product, in order to
render the values and meanings they wish to assign to a product into physical
form. This kind of metaphor use helps designers translate abstract concepts
€
into concrete product properties (Hekkert, 2006; Ozcan & Sonneveld, 2009;
Van Rompay, 2008), which eventually communicate functional, social, psy-
chological, and cultural meanings to users.

We define a product metaphor as any kind of product whose design intention-

ally references the physical properties (e.g., form, sound, movement, smell, and
so on) of another entity for specific, expressive purposes. As is the case with a
verbal metaphor, a product metaphor also consists of an ‘association’ between
two entities: a target and a source. The target is the ‘product’, whose shape (or
sound, or movement, etc.) alludes to a more or less disparate entity (the terms
target and product will be used interchangeably throughout the paper); and
the source is the remote entity whose characteristics are associated with the
target to assign a particular meaning to it. Designers shape the target in
such a way that it evokes the experience of the source without violating the
identity of the target (Forceville, 2008). In this process, called ‘mapping’, a
designer physically applies the metaphor (the terms mapping and application
will be used interchangeably throughout the paper) by projecting relevant
physical properties of the source onto (often compatible) properties of the
target. In every metaphor, there is at least oneeoften more than oneeproperty
from the source that is transferred to the target. Through careful mapping, the
target inherits the meaning that the source embodies. Thus, when the domi-
nant design features of a jet plane are incorporated into the design of a car,
any meaning associated with this plane (e.g., powerful, fast) becomes attached
implicitly to the car. These and other, different kinds of metaphors are gener-
ously applied in every field of design, from architecture to user interface and
software design (see e.g., Blackwell, 2006; Casakin, 2007; Fishkin, 2004;
Hurtienne & Blessing, 2007).

Although the basic definition of metaphorea transfer of properties from

source to targeteapplies to both linguistic and product metaphors, product
metaphors have certain idiosyncratic qualities that differentiate them from
the former. The first difference is that in product metaphors, target and source
are literally merged (Forceville, Hekkert, & Tan, 2006; Van Rompay, 2008),
while in linguistic metaphors (often in an A is B format) the target and source
are signalled separately. In product metaphors, source and target are physi-
cally incorporated into a single product. Forceville (2008) calls these types
of metaphors ‘integrated metaphors’, and Carroll (1996) names this phenom-
enon ‘homospatiality’. Thanks to homospatiality, target and source become
aspects of a unified entity, which in turn may hinder separation of the two;

Handle with care! 199

 the product we experience is an integrated and novel phenomenon (Van
Rompay, 2008).

Merging target and source creates an additional task for designers, which
brings us to the second difference between product and linguistic metaphors:
designers are responsible for making the physical manifestation of the features
they wish to map from source to target tangible and perceivable to users via the
formal properties of the target. It follows that product metaphor source iden-
tification may require more effort on the part of the user, as they need to
rebuild the association themselves, intuitively. In other words, designers not
only ‘see something as something else’, but they also ‘make something
resemble something else’. In processing linguistic metaphors, while recipients
do not need to put effort into detecting the source, they are still required to
guess which attributes to map from an undisclosed source so as to grasp the
meaning that emerges (Camac & Glucksberg, 1984; Forceville, 2008).

The third and final difference is that product metaphors can be multimodal,
whereas linguistic metaphors are generally monomodal; a designer has control
over how a product’s form conveys a metaphorical message, while linguistic
metaphors can only be signalled in spoken or written form. As we will illus-
trate below, metaphors can be suggested using a variety of instantiations, or
‘modes’ (form, interaction, sound, material, etc.; see Section 4). Before discus-
sing these, in the next section we will carefully examine the reasons behind de-
signers’ use of metaphors.

3 Why employ a product metaphor?

When generating a product metaphor, typically a designer has the intention to
provide users with some kind of experience, and will choose a source to asso-
ciate with the product according to this intention. Principally, these intentions
may be ‘pragmatic’, to enable the fulfilment of instrumental and functional
goals; or ‘experiential’, to provide aesthetic, semantic, sensorial or emotional
experiences to users.

3.1 Pragmatic intentions

These types of intentions aim to reduce the cognitive load associated with
gauging the instrumental meaning, function and use of a product. The main
goal is to turn a complex product or interaction into a clear and comprehen-
sible one, through (1) providing product identification, or (2) conveying infor-
mation about how the product is to be used.

3.1.1 Identification
Metaphors generated with identification in mind assist users’ recognition of
the product, and their understanding of the category to which it belongs. De-
signers want users to be able to infer what the product has been designed for,
an intention that is especially essential when launching a new product type.

200 Design Studies Vol 40 No. C September 2015

 For instance, when the first e-book readers were put on the market, they were
similar in size to an actual book, and had a cover. As a matter of fact, an e-
book reader is just a device used to display data: it can take any shape. Yet
the explicit reference to a book communicated that this product is ‘for
reading’. Another example is the cigarette receptacle seen in Figure 2a, whose
message is very direct: this product is only for cigarette disposal.

3.1.2 Use and operation

Use and operation intentions involve designing the way users interact with a
product. An example might be the gestural controls offered by smartphones
and tablets, such as making the gesture of turning a page (swiping) to go to
the next screen, or dragging icons to classify them. The selection and applica-
tion of these intuitively familiar gestures can allow users to comprehend new
or complex use situations, because these gestures rely on existing knowledge
from everyday life. An example is the Hourglass Coffee Maker seen in
Figure 2b. To make cold brew coffee, it requires users to ‘invert’ the machine
after putting the coffee grinds in, and wait for a while before it is ready. The
utilitarian reference to an hourglass provides users with clues about product
operation.

3.2 Experiential intentions

Metaphors can also be used with the intention to promote rich sensorial,
emotional or meaningful product experiences. This can be attained by telling
a story through the product, attaching an ethical/moral message to it, or by
creating something fun or witty.

3.2.1 Prose and poetry

This type of intention refers to assigning an abstract symbolic meaning to a
product in order to tell a story. An example can be seen in Figure 3a, which
shows the security cameras visible at various train stations in the Netherlands.
Here, the intention of the designers was to attach a friendly, unthreatening
character to the cameras, in order to mitigate the feeling of being watched
by ‘Big Brother’. Another example is Nanimarquina’s Luna rug, seen in
Figure 3b. The design and use of the rug, as well as its catchphrase ‘walking
on the moon without it being a giant leap’, equally support users efforts to
build their own unique stories when walking upon it.

3.2.2 Ideology
Ideology refers to promoting (or criticizing) an ideology by embedding an
ethical, social or moral message in the product through metaphorical associa-
tion. An example is the Surveillance chandelier seen in Figure 4a, which in-
tends to achieve the exact opposite of what the NS camera does. It is a set
of spotlights, not CCTV cameras, yet by controversially bringing it to our
living rooms, its designers want to remind us that Big Brother is watching
us everywhere. The metaphor was intended as ‘food for thought’ to prompt
users to reflect on the current reality of our world. Another example is the

Handle with care! 201

Figure 2 (a) Identification: Pepelkus outdoor cigarette receptacle by Art Lebedev studio (courtesy of Art Lebedev studio), (b) Use and Oper-
ation: Hourglass coffee maker

environmentally conscious bicycle rack seen in Figure 4b. By giving the rack
the same silhouette as a car, and placing it alongside the road (where and
how cars usually park), the designer intends for the product to provide bicycles
with the attention he thinks they deserve, and promote a healthy, eco-friendly
lifestyle among users.

3.2.3 Fun and wit

This category consists of product metaphors intended to make users smile.
Creating a surprising, unexpected or incongruent association between target
and source sparks a pleasant reaction. A certain degree of cleverness is
involved in designing these products, as demonstrated by the Pianobell door-
bell pictured in Figure 5a. With this product, guests can announce their arrival
with a touch of creativity, instead of the same old ‘ding dong’. Another
example is the Kastor pencil sharpener by Alessi (Figure 5b), the result of
an association with a beaver: the designer has playfully transferred the natu-
rally deliberate, skilful wood-gnawing qualities associated with a beaver
onto the sharpener. The marriage of a beaver and a pencil sharpener is unex-
pected yet meaningful, which makes the product amusing.

These categories are not mutually exclusive: having a pragmatic intention does
not necessarily mean that a designer does not pay attention to the experiential
aspects of a product, and vice versa. In the case of the NS camera seen in
Figure 3a, for instance, the designer would surely have worked on creating a
product that is also effective and efficient, or when coming up with the rotation
mechanism for the Hour Glass coffee maker seen in Figure 2b, the designer
most likely envisaged the pleasantly satisfying potential experience that users

202 Design Studies Vol 40 No. C September 2015

Figure 3 Prose and Poetry: (a) NS camera by We Are Perspective (courtesy of We Are Perspective, A Pezy Group company), (b) Luna rug by
Nanimarquina (design: Oscar Tusquets, photograph: Albert Font; courtesy of Nanimarquina)

Figure 4 Ideology: (a) Surveillance chandelier by Humans Since 1982, (b) VD 003 bike rack by Adrien Rovero

Figure 5 Fun and Wit: (a) Pianobell doorbell by Li Jianye, (b) Kastor pencil sharpener by Rodrigo Torres (for Alessi)

Handle with care! 203

 could have with the product. Certain intentions likely dominated the design
process, and these affected how the metaphor was ‘designed’. This application
process is the subject of the next section.

4 How to apply a product metaphor?

In order to generate a metaphor, designers select a source to associate with their
product according to a variety of intentions. Source selection begins with
noticing a potential source’s relevance to the target, and how appropriately it
conveys the intended meaning itself. In an earlier study, and in accordance
with studies on verbal metaphors (Glucksberg, McGlone, & Manfredi, 1997),
we found that designers prefer to employ sources that have the meaning they
intend to convey as a salient property (Cila, Hekkert, & Visch, 2014a). In order
to emphasize the fastness of a skateboard for instance, a designer would (or
should) use a source that is acclaimed for its speed, such as a rocket, a cheetah,
or a bullet. Other things like a lion or a thunderbolt are also fast, yet this is not
their most salient property: they connote ‘power’ more than speed. These and
other sources may be drawn from any domain, but the most common ones
are other products, historic or cultural artefacts, non-products (e.g., nature-
related entities, natural phenomena, living things), works of art, and actions
(Crilly, Moultrie, & Clarkson, 2008; Eckert & Stacey, 2000).

4.1 Embodied vs. learned metaphors

Many years ago, the first author was contacted by a Dutch newspaper to
comment on the immense success of a new coffee maker by Philips/Douwe Eg-
berts, the Senseo Crema (Figure 6). During a discussion of functional consid-
erationsethe machine allows you to make just one or two cups by easily
inserting a coffee-filled ‘pod’ehe argued that its success could also have
been due to its singular shape: the machine’s inclining aspect alludes to that
of a waiter or butler courteously bending over to offer a cup of coffee to the
user. Shortly after the publication of the interview, he received an email
from the designer averring that this purported metaphorical reference was
never intended. This example demonstrates that designers can unwittingly
create metaphors that are perceptible to users nevertheless, especially in the
case of so-called ‘embodied metaphors’.

Metaphors in products can vary from primary or embodied metaphors, to

learned, cultural or creative ones. When a targetesource association is based
on innate or sensorimotor knowledge acquired through interaction with the
world, the emerging metaphor is an embodied one; when it is based on cultural
knowledge and expertise acquired over time from the culture we live in, the
metaphor is a learned one (‘cultural metaphor’ in Forceville et al., 2006).
The surveillance camera seen in Figure 3a is an embodied metaphor, because
the product appeals to an evolutionary and universally positive reaction to
infant-like physical properties. Friendliness and cuteness are usually charac-
terized by a disproportionately large head, large eyes, and round and softer

204 Design Studies Vol 40 No. C September 2015

Figure 6 ‘Senseo Crema’ by
Philips

body features (Lorenz, 1950). By shaping the product according to these traits,
the designer triggers a more general mental schema that classifies our sensori-
motor experiences of cuteness (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980).

Along these lines, Van Rompay, Hekkert, and M€ uller (2005) showed that our
embodied image schemas could explain our interpretation of objects’ abstract
characteristics, such as trustworthiness, dominance, restlessness, and so forth.
For instance, they found that jugs that express higher degrees of closure of
their contents were perceived as more ‘secure’ and ‘constricting’. Similarly,
an increase in jug height resulted in higher ratings on characteristics such as
‘dominant’ and ‘impressive’. The jugs were thusly perceived relative to innate
image schemas wherein height is associated with dominance, containment with
safety, and so on (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980; Pinker, 2007). Additionally, as
Hurtienne and Blessing (2007) have shown, when such schemas are metaphor-
ically applied to the interaction mode of products, they lead to easily under-
standable ‘use cues’ or ‘affordances’, as demonstrated by the Apple
‘pouring’ feature previously mentioned.

Most product metaphor examples provided thus far can be considered as

learned or cultural metaphors. Since this type of metaphor provides an uncom-
mon juxtaposition between distant entities, they are sometimes called ‘creative’
or ‘novel’ metaphors (Forceville et al., 2006). In order to generate such meta-
phors (and also make sense of them), both designer and user have to ‘know’
what a cigarette looks like (Figure 2a), how an hourglass works (Figure 2b),
what a CCTV represents (Figure 4a) and so on. Thanks to our awareness of
these cultural meanings, these metaphors become unique and powerful; other-
wise they would not achieve their communicative purposes. In fact, the distinc-
tion between embodied and cultural metaphors may not always be sharp. They
could also be considered as two ends of the same continuum, with

Handle with care! 205

 sensorimotor metaphors somewhere in the middle; however, sensorimotor ex-
periences are culture-specific, to some degree. Enlarging pictures on your
smartphone or tablet with your thumb and index finger is an action that
most people now perform intuitively, but behind this intuition is some degree
of earlier experience with touch screens and image-manipulating computer
software.

4.2 Metaphoric means

After finding a source to associate with the target, the designer needs to
consider how to communicate this to the user. In this mapping stage, the met-
aphor is physically applied by transferring source cues to the target, i.e. by
incorporating the source’s specific details or overall character into a newly re-
shaped target. These cues should be the most prominent or salient properties
exhibited by a source, or else the reference to that particular source will not be
identifiable (Glucksberg & Keysar, 1979; Jones & Estes, 2006; Ortony,
Vondruska, Foss, & Jones, 1985). If one aims to make a metaphorical refer-
ence to a cloud when designing a chair for instance, just colouring the chair
white would not be good enough to highlight this reference. To communicate
the source unambiguously, the designer would (also) need to transfer other
typical attributes of a cloud, like fluffiness for instance.

These salient properties are then transformed to suit the medium of the target,
and lastly, are transferred to it physically. To accomplish this mapping, the
designer can use various means or ‘modes’ that we classify here in eight
categories:

Form (i.e., shape, outline, colour) is the most common means with which to
project a source onto a target. Most examples provided so far involve a pro-
jection of form properties. Either specific details borrowed from the form
(e.g., the salient properties of a jet plane) or its overall impression (e.g.,
the body, the lens, and even the cables of a CCTV camera in Figure 4a)
can be transferred.

Interaction is the mode designers employ when they make a product to be
used or operated the same way as a source. Consider the Hourglass Coffee
Maker (Figure 2b) and Pianobell examples (Figure 5a) previously cited: the
way that people interact with the source is incorporated into target product
functionality, i.e., we ‘invert’ the coffee maker and ‘play’ the bell. The ‘pour-
ing’ referred to in the Apple patent mentioned previously is also in line with
mapping at this interaction level.

Sound can also be mapped to a product, as in a car door that sounds sur-
prisingly ‘heavy’ when slammed. In the Alessi kettle seen in Figure 7a, there
is a bird-shaped whistle at the end of the spout, which makes a soft melodic
chirp when the water boils.

Movement is the property that has been applied when the overall product or
its parts move or behave like the source. An example can be seen in

206 Design Studies Vol 40 No. C September 2015

Figure 7 (a) Mapping of sound: Kettle by Michael Graves (for Alessi), (b) Mapping of movement: Awakening lamp by Front Design (courtesy
of Front Design), (c) Mapping of material: Rosaria rosary by Joe Velluto (courtesy of JVLT), (d) Mapping of smell: Mary biscuit box by
Stefano Giovannoni (for Alessi), (e) Mapping of name: Socrates corkscrew by Jasper Morrison (for Alessi), (f) Mapping of graphics:
Ctrl þ O bottle opener by Art Lebedev Studio (courtesy of Art Lebedev studio)

Figure 7b, which shows a lamp whose on/off functionality mimics our rising
when we wake and lying down when we sleep: it ‘wakes up’ and stands erect
to light the room when someone comes in, and lies down when the room is
empty.

Handle with care! 207


Material/texture is another property that can be transferred from a source.
In Figure 7c, we see a set of rosary beads made out of bubble wrap, which
surprisingly (and conveniently) maps the highly enjoyable and compulsory
nature of popping bubble wrap bubbles to the systematic progression of the
fingers along the beads to count each prayer. When the user gets to the cross
the task is finished, and all the bubbles have been popped.

Smell/taste mapping is also possible, although not a common way to build
metaphor into products. An example is the Alessi Mary biscuit box seen in
Figure 7d, which is not only shaped like a biscuit, but whose lid also smells
like one.

The name of a source can also be transferred to a product. However, names
are mostly used in conjunction with other properties, especially form. In
Figure 7e, we see a corkscrew that has the shape of a man. This association,
however, is not that meaningful without the man’s name: ‘Socrates’. Here,
the designer intends to make an allusion to the Socratic method, namely the
philosopher’s practice of ‘extracting the truth’ from his conversational part-
ners. This name transfers new layers of meaning to the product: without the
name it is just a man-like corkscrew; but when given the name Socrates, it
alludes not only to Socrates’ methodical pressure, but also to the truth
ascribed to wine in the popular adage ‘in vino veritas’.

Graphics printed on the product can be metaphorical as well. In the bottle
opener shown in Figure 7f, the designer humorously associates the expedi-
ency of using a keyboard shortcut with opening a (beer) bottle: the ‘O’ in
the command ‘Ctrl þ O’ (the universally-used computer keyboard shortcut
for ‘open’) is literally the lever used to open the bottle.

As can be seen in these examples, transferring more than one property and em-
ploying multiple modes of mapping are very common in product design. This
leads to multimodal metaphors, such as the Alessi kettle (sound and form;
Figure 7d), the Rosaria rosary beads (material, interaction, and sound;
Figure 7c), or the Mary biscuit box (form and smell; Figure 7d).

There are different ways that these eight means can be projected onto a prod-
uct, ranging from literal adoption to essence abstraction (Helms, Vattam, &
Goel, 2009). Mapping involves an adaptation of a source’s perceptual prop-
erties to the visual language of the target. A designer can make this adapta-
tion quite basic by literally transferring source properties directly to a target,
e.g., making the blade and handle of a letter opener resemble the blade and
handle of a samurai sword. A more elaborate strategy would be to adapt the
source to the target by extracting its ‘essence’, and infusing the target with it.
To illustrate both approaches, consider the two cutlery sets shown in
Figure 8: each associates properties extracted from Neolithic tools. The first
example involves an abstraction of the tools themselves, which are shaped to
fit the typical appearance of a fork, spoon and a knife. The mapping has been
conducted in such a way that both the target and the source are identifiable,

208 Design Studies Vol 40 No. C September 2015

Figure 8 ‘Sekki cutlery’ by Nendo (photograph: Hiroshi Iwasaki, courtesy of Nendo) and ‘Neolithic knives’ by Matthias Kaeding (courtesy of
KaedingNYC)

and both have been blended together in an aesthetically pleasing manner. In

the second example, on the other hand, the Neolithic knife form has been
rendered more literally, causing the cutlery set to lose its functional identity.
Without the mapping of the ‘name’, it is difficult to identify what this product
is: the product does not make any formal reference to typical forks, spoons or
knives. In other words, although both examples have used the same Neolithic
tools as a source, the identity of the product is maintained in the first by ab-
stracting and adapting the source to suit the form and usage conventions of a
typical cutlery set, whereas this formal identity has been compromised in the
second example, by applying the unwieldy Neolithic form of the knife
directly to the target.

5 When are metaphors (not) effective?

The success of a product metaphor is clearly in the hands of its designer, but
there is a portion that is not under a designer’s control: user interpretation.
Since users generally do not have access to the thought process underlying a
product’s design, they are compelled to construct their own interpretation of
the product by combining product features with their personal standards, ex-
pectations, and prior experiences (Crilly, Maier, & Clarkson, 2008). As much
as designers do their best to clearly communicate their metaphor, various types
of miscommunication are possible that hinder the effectiveness of this meaning
exchange.

First, users may entirely ‘miss’ the metaphor that the designer intended. Meta-
phoric communication is a cooperative act: people construe a metaphor if and
because they think that its producer intends them to do so (Forceville, 2002).
Failing to give perceivable cues so users can identify the metaphor obstructs
metaphor communication. Second, users may assume a metaphor is intended,
but they may not ‘get’ the metaphor. This is, most likely, less of a risk when
employing embodied metaphors as they rely on universal, shared sensorimotor
experiences (see 4.1). Many people would also know what the Moon

Handle with care! 209

 (Figure 3b) or a car looks like (Figure 4b), so interpretation of these learned
metaphors is as easy as the interpretation of most embodied metaphors. The
Socrates corkscrew (Figure 7e), on the other hand, can be considered as an
example that requires specialized knowledge to make sense of it: it only ap-
peals to those who know what the Socratic method is, and can conceive of
how it may be relevant to the function of a corkscrew, or the wine drinking
it facilitates. Finally, users may ‘misinterpret’ the actual intention of a
designer. Interpretation cannot be reliably controlled because different people
will construct different meanings depending on the context (Crilly, Maier,
et al., 2008; Crilly, Moultrie, et al., 2008). Whenever a designer presents a met-
aphor, there is the risk that the inferences drawn may not be the ones that were
intended.

As metaphoric communication is ambiguous, in addition to the situations

where the intended metaphor is not recognised, what it connotes may also
evolve over time, or through use. Markussen, Ozcan, € and Cila (2012) cite
the example of the lady-shaped Anna G corkscrew from Alessi (Figure 9):
its shape may initially allude to a chaste, ‘angelic’ being, until she puts her dress
over the neck of the bottle suggestively. Furthermore, the experience of a met-
aphor may also fade over time. There is a so-called ‘life cycle of a metaphor’
(Bowdle & Gentner, 2005; Searle, 1979), in which the metaphorical power of
a product wears off after frequent encounters. The metaphor becomes an inte-
gral part of the user’s knowledge structure, and gradually gets disconnected
from its source. In these instances we speak of a ‘dead metaphor’, as for
example in the design of digital cameras, which are now seen as a category
of their own; their shape is no longer perceived as a metaphorical reference
to older analogue cameras (see Pirhonen, 2005; for a discussion on the matu-
ration of metaphors in design).

Even when metaphors are appropriately recognised by users, they are not
equally appreciated. Some of them appeal to us; others strike us as very
clever, whereas still others are far-fetched or incomprehensible. In order to
be effective and aesthetically pleasing, a metaphor should strike a balance be-
tween its clarity and interestingness (Cila, Borsboom, & Hekkert, 2014).
Clarity comes from the understandability and appropriateness of a meta-
phoric association, and the identifiability of its source. A metaphor is good
if users can identify what the source reference is (e.g., this coffee machine
looks like an hourglass) and whether that reference makes sense (e.g., why
does this coffee machine look like an hourglass?). Interestingness, on the
other hand, comes from the novelty of the metaphoric idea and subtlety of
the mapping. Sopory and Dillard (2002) argued that elaborating upon a met-
aphor and resolving the mystery it presents are what make a metaphor
attractive. To create this mystery, the relationship of a target and a source
should not be too obvious, and any reference made to the source should
be subtle in its application. In sum, the aesthetic quality of product

210 Design Studies Vol 40 No. C September 2015

Figure 9 ‘Anna G’ corkscrew
by Alessandro Mendini (for
Alessi)

Handle with care! 211

 metaphors results from simultaneously maximizing the understandability and
novelty of their association, as well as the identifiability and subtlety of the
mapping (Cila et al., 2014).

6 General discussion
In our introduction, we followed Lakoff and Johnson (1980) in defining met-
aphors as ‘understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of
another’. In keeping with this definition, merely mapping source properties
to a target is not enough for the final product to be construed as a metaphor.
The use of metaphor must involve some form of meaning transfer, which
changes the experience of a product as a whole (Alty & Knott, 1999; Van
Rompay, 2008). If this is not the case, then there is only juxtaposition, and
not metaphor. A sofa that is shaped like a dolphin and a showerhead shaped
like a flower have forms that have nothing to do with their use and meaning.
They involve a physical mapping from source to target; but not a meaningful,
conceptual association between these entities. In our definition of a product
metaphor, as long as a designer (or a user!) feels that two entities have been
combined with a meaningful purpose, the result becomes a product metaphor.
We exclude intentionality from this definition because metaphors can exist un-
intentionally, as shown in the Senseo coffee maker example.

Our loose definition may have caused other tropes to also be considered as met-
aphors. Although Lakoff and Johnson maintained that the label ‘metaphor’ also
applies to other rhetorical figures of speech such as metonymy (i.e., a thing is
called not by its own name but by the name of something associated with that
thing), paronomasia (e.g., the use of a word in different senses for humorous ef-
fects), and irony, scholars who are fond of a more fine-grained analysis may not
find some of the examples given metaphoric. For instance, the Pianobell door-
bell seen in Figure 5a can also be considered as metonymic because three keys
represent the whole piano, yet in our analysis we consider it an apt metaphor.
The same broadness can also be seen in the work of Kennedy (1982) and
Johns (1984), who collected numerous examples of visual manifestations of fig-
ures of speech and used the word metaphor virtually as synonymous to the word
‘trope’ itself (Forceville, 1996). Rather than fastidiously differentiating meta-
phors from other tropes, what is necessary for designers is to understand how
to apply metaphors in a way that leads to rewarding product experiences.

Naturally, designers can solve most design problems without resorting to a met-
aphor. What we have tried to demonstrate, however, is that there are probably
many more reasons to employ a metaphor than most designers would immedi-
ately think. An interesting question would be: to what extent do designers delib-
erately seek to solve their problems with metaphors? Designers rarely sit at their
desk with the intention to use a metaphor (except perhaps when they look for an
overarching marketing strategy that would shape all designerly actions in a
company; Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995). Instead, a metaphor may often come

212 Design Studies Vol 40 No. C September 2015

 to them spontaneously when considering various other solutions. One famous
anecdote is from the acclaimed designer Philippe Starck, who explained how
the design of his iconic lemon squeezer ‘Juicy Salif’ came about: ‘Once, in a
restaurant, this vision of a squid like lemon came upon me, so I started sketching
it . and four years later it became quite famous’ (Lloyd & Snelders, 2003, p.
240). Lloyd and Snelders attribute this association to Starck’s childhood and
an early interest in Sci-Fi cartoons, but the cognitive association resulting in
the metaphor seems rather instantaneous and unplanned.

In Section 5 we discussed the various ways in which metaphors can be wrongly

understood. The Juicy Salif example also shows that metaphors are not always
unambiguous and can give rise to various (mis)interpretations. Apart from a
squid, people have identified the source as a spider, and a space ship. Some
of the metaphorical examples in this paper are no different. Whereas in
most instances the metaphor was obvious by its clear reference (e.g. an hour-
glass) or name (e.g., Luna rug), some of our interpretations are likely arguable.
For instance, one of the anonymous reviewers of an earlier version of this pa-
per found it hard to accept our ‘suggestive’ interpretation of the Anna G cork-
screw. This example clearly shows that one can fairly conclude that
metaphorical interpretations mainly reside in the beholder.

If a designer primarily intends to pragmatically clarify what a product is for, or

how it should be used, then it is best to avoid the possibility of more than one
interpretation; obviously, the metaphor should be clear and easy to under-
stand. Experiential intentions, on the other hand, allow for richer, more com-
plex and more original metaphors. A previous study showed that designers
with pragmatic intentions indeed focus on a source’s salient and obvious qual-
ities, and communicate their intention through a clear and easily accessible
design; whereas experiential intentions encouraged designers to uncover un-
usual sources that could lead to surprising and clever metaphors (Cila,
Hekkert, & Visch, 2014b).

The classifications in Sections 3 and 4 were intended to show the richness to be

found in conscious metaphor generation and application, a process that we
believe can make a key contribution to the ever-expanding field of user experi-
ence as well as that of product design. Here we listed the various intentions
behind a designer’s choice to employ a metaphor, as well as the variety in means
they have at their disposal. As indicated, the separate categories in both classi-
fications are not mutually exclusive, i.e. various intentions and different means
go very well together, and our list is probably not exhaustive. We hope our clas-
sification inspires others to identify categories we have missed.

7 Conclusion
Throughout this paper, we have seen metaphor at work in the design of prod-
ucts. We began by showing how metaphorical thinking is fundamental to our

Handle with care! 213

 perception of the world, and then gradually explored the specifics of a product
metaphor, and how designers use them. Our aim was dual: to reveal the power
and inevitability of metaphor use in design practice, and to inspire designers to
generate good metaphors. As Beck (2004, p. 168) pertinently put forward, ‘The
question is not whether you will think metaphorically or not. The question is
whether you will become aware of your metaphors and choose them
consciously’. Metaphorical thinking is an innate capability we all possess.
For this reason, metaphors can be actively generated, experienced, and stud-
ied, as we intended to show in this paper.

With our classification of the various means designers employ to create meta-
phorical products, we have revealed the rich and oftentimes hidden world of
metaphors, which serve various designerly intentions. These intentions are
not limited to the domain of fun, as is so often assumed when metaphors in
design are discussed, but may very well be of a fundamental communicative
nature, such as to explain to the user what the product is for. We believe
that the unpacking of the product metaphor notion undertaken in this paper
will inspire designers to explore the power of the metaphor further, and
generate meaningful and effective products that enhance our lives.

Acknowledgement
Paul Hekkert was supported by MAGW VICI grant number 453-10-004 from
The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). We would like
to express our gratitude to two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful com-
ments to an earlier version of this paper.

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