Probing metaphors in user narratives to inform design process

This study explores how metaphors from users' worlds can be incorporated into design to facilitate user-centred design processes. Through a two-stage data generation process and following qualitative content analyses, we investigate how designers utilise user metaphors in idea generation. For data generation, we collected narratives rich in metaphors from a particular user group and asked 13 designers to make sense of these narratives through metaphor analysis. As a result, we identified useful user metaphor categories, how designers engage with them, and their correlation with particular design outcomes. Our findings reveal that employing metaphor analysis empowers designers to gain an in depth understanding of user perceptions and behaviours, and supports their idea generation processes towards enhancing user experiences in diverse ways. •Analysis of user metaphors can significantly contribute to the idea generation process.•Designers utilised user metaphors to facilitate the user experience in different ways.•We depicted the process of idea generation through metaphor analysis.•We classified user metaphors and moves designers used to analyse and utilise them.•Certain kinds of user metaphors were found more useful by designers.