Metaphors, Conceptual Models and Evolutionary Epistemology

Starting from views on traditional metaphor and mental/conceptual model theory this paper describes the possible influence of the »evolutionary epistemology« (EE) theory to the HCI theory base. This theory is particularly important to HCI especially because of its culture independence on the proposed basis and its coverage of unconscious processes. The first had been a long struggle and still is. For the second area it holds true, that the vast majority of studies and models are dealing with rational part of cognition. This rational part, as is shown by EE rests on the concepts of »ratiomorphus apparatus« and it even cannot be freed from this pre-assumptions given in that apparatus. Meta-communication via training, manuals or even short explanations is getting more rare. Systems are used as is. Which makes it important to get system images »self explanatory at first sight«. Furthermore systems are turning more and more towards multi-media systems, which indeed calls for integration of the different senses. It seems that graphical user interfaces are well studied but senses apart from the visual are missing. Sound and haptics are often designed carefully but sometimes separately from the rest of the design. Not to mention olfactory.