The role of designer expertise in source selection during product metaphor generation

Metaphors have a communicative role in design that entails a transfer of meaning from an entity (i.e. source) to the designed product (i.e. target). In this paper, we investigate the effect of the expertise of designer on the accessibility of the sources that they employ in metaphors. In the study conducted, novice and expert designers were asked to generate metaphors and the sources they selected were used for analysis. The results indicated that, (1) novices tended to select easily accessible sources whose similarity with the target was obvious, and (2) experts tended to use sources that are less similar with the target, which are more difficult-to-access in the first place. These results are then discussed in the light of metaphor theories and product design knowledge.Industrial DesignIndustrial Design Engineerin