Venkatesh Rao, a researcher in the Xerox Innovation Group, had a great post on Mashable about conceptual metaphors and web innovation. Rao makes a observation that I never noticed:
“Consider these terms: page, scroll, file, folder, trash can, bookmark, inbox, email, desktop, library, archive and index. They are all part of the document metaphor, a superset of the ‘desktop’ metaphor.”
Because we see everything on the Internet as a document, “our conceptualization of the web still does not truly reflect its non-sequential, branching texture, created by hyperlinks.” Rao argues that if we can avoid the document metaphor, we can be truly innovative.
It’s definitely food for thought for us at Sano as we look for ways to move beyond the traditional website in the digital space.
