• Archives of design research
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.105-114
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• 2000

Since the apple company adopted the desktop-office metaphor in Macintosh, the metaphoric interface has been used generally in multimedia products or services, on which user-friendly knowledge, conception, and images are represented metaphorically. Although the metaphor can be employed as one of ways to identify the essence or pattern of information, a theoretical framework on its relation with the user interface is not fully established. In this study, the user interface considered as a core of multimedia design was discussed, and the form of the graphic metaphor was investigated. The seven forms of the graphical metaphor presented herein would be applied as one of approaches to the user interface in relevant researches.