在您的軟體和現實世界間建立關連

總是使用使用者熟悉的字彙、片語與觀念,而非底層系統的術語。使用的術語,應和他們對您軟體支援之工作的知識相關。例如在醫學上,裝一特定病人所有資訊的文件夾稱作「病歷夾」。因此,醫療軟體可能會將包含的東西和病歷夾相同的病人紀錄稱為「病歷夾」,而非「病人資料庫紀錄」。

You can often take advantage of your users' knowledge of the real world by using metaphor— that is, a familiar concept from the outside world— to represent elements within your application. For example:

  • an image of a file folder suggests a container into which documents can be placed
  • a waste basket suggests a container into which items can be placed when they are no longer needed

When using metaphors, however, it is important to neither take the metaphor too literally, nor to extend the metaphor beyond its reasonable use. For example, the capacity of a file folder should not be limited to the capacity of a physical file folder, which presumably could contain only a few documents before becoming unwieldy. On the other hand, a waste basket should not be used for anything other than holding discarded files. It should not be used, for example, to eject a removable disk such as a floppy or CD.