Interface Ontology: Creating a Physical World for Computer Interfaces

Interaction patterns are often used to present existing knowledge about user-interfaces in a generalised, but well-defined manner. Such patterns provide insight into the practises and assumptions of the design community. This paper presents a small number of patterns based on the concept of physical ontology. That is, the paper puts forward patterns in which computing concepts in a program are explained to the user through basic physical metaphors. The end result is an initial foray into uncovering the physical basis of the user-interface.