Metaphors of Human Thinking in HCI: Habit, Stream of Thought, Awareness, Utterance, and Knowing

Understanding human thinking is crucial in the design and evaluation of human-computer interaction. Inspired by introspective psychology, we present five metaphors of human thinking. The aim of the metaphors is to help designers to consider important traits of human thinking when designing. The metaphors capture aspects of human thinking virtually absent in recent years of HCI literature. As an example of the utility of the metaphors, we show how a selection of good and poor user interfaces can be appreciated in terms of the metaphors. The metaphors are also used to reinterpret central notions in human-computer interaction, such as consistency and information scent, in terms of human thinking. Further, we suggest the metaphors be used for evaluating interfaces.