Flor@lias: interaction through living natural metaphors
Living metaphors
In contrast to common GUI's that use metaphors that are often linked to a specific work environment, I use pure natural metaphors, living organisms like plants and insects.
The reason for my choice is the possibility of combining behavioral and visual metaphors, creating metaphors that I like to call "living". In this way it's possible to significantly enrich the user experience. Through living metaphors, it is possible to transfer emotions, experiences and memories associated to objects in the real world to the corresponding objects in the digital environment. The user can "live" the information, that becomes real and tangible.
The natural behavior patterns are particularly suitable for a metaphorical use because each behavior has a certain meaning and reason. When you look at living beeing their forms, their movement and their behavior have a specific meaning.
In Flor@lias the birth, development and death of a plant becomes a metaphor to explain the emergence, development, dispersal and disposal of an information. For example, a message (a leaf) that has not received the user's attention for too long, begins to die, getting sick at first and then felling to the ground, while a message that the user cares about can become a petal on the blossom. A flower that receives the user's attention grows and becomes more and more beautiful, and vice versa.
In this way the flowers on the screen become a representation of the relationship between the user and the person they represent.
Moreover, the natural metaphor is not limited to the GUI. An external device allows to connect the main screen to a real plant, which can be used as an input device. Indeed, the user can receive new messages both touching the screen and watering the plant.
Taking care of his plant, the user is also taking care of his mailbox, and the pairing of a living being to a technology makes the latter appear less abstract and more poetic at the eyes of the user.
