analogy in design for the lightbox

“This is like being in space”

“This feels like outer space”

“This is like being in a swimming pool at night”.

“... its more like swimming in murky water at the seaside.”

The Lightbox explores how an audience could engage with science, the exploration of Antarctica, and optics by using an analogical design strategy.

As David Wong (Wong 1993, p 1259) notes, “Through analogies, an understanding of novel situations may be constructed by comparison to more familiar domains of knowledge”. Hernan and Goldschmidt refer to Vosniadou and Ortony when describing analogy as entailing “the transfer of relational information from a known situation (usually referred to as source or base), to a situation that needs explanation (referred to as target), where at least one of the related elements is not known. (Hernan, C and Goldschmidt, 1999) The Analogy happens because of the possible relationship between the target and the source.

This case study will seek to discuss ways we can reflect on the use of analogy and how this may inform design research