ZAT metaphor
Good user interfaces are built upon metaphors. Lately, I’ve been thinking about metaphors for ZAT.
There are three main things in ZAT: Regions are things that take up a substantial area on a map, such as cities, states, countries, national parks, etc. Places are smaller things on the map, like hotels, restaurants, sights, and other places to go to. Links connect Regions and Places to web pages with information about them.
There isn’t really a good metaphor here. These are more implementation terms than conceptual terms.
One metaphor I’ve been thinking about is the (printed) guide book. In the guide book metaphor, Regions become Sections (and sub-sections), Places become Entries, and Links, um, become something (Posts? Bookmarks? Tips? or stay Links?). The metaphor is that a guide book is divided into Sections. There can be a section on Oregon, and a (sub) section on Portland, and (sub-sub) sections on specific neighborhoods. Within sections there are Entries. There are entries for hotels, restaurants, sights, etc. And each Entry has a number of Posts (Links).
I’m not sure if I love this metaphor, but at least it is a metaphor, so unless I come up with something else, I’ll probably change over to it. Or not.
–wm
[added 29 sept] I didn’t end up using this metaphor, but I did change the name “Places” to “Spots”. So a spot is a specific place on the map (like a hotel, restaurant, etc.). I’m now using the name “Place” to refer to both Regions and Spots. I’m still thinking about changing “Region” to “Area” but for now I’m sticking with Region.
[later] I did change Region to Area. To recap, Places is the generic term, which in turn consists of Areas and Spots.