Analogies are like bridges between the familiar and unfamiliar. Here's how to get your users across them.

1. Building effective analogies
Ajay Ganapathy

2. Analogies
• According to Schema Theory, people
understand new, unfamiliar things in terms of
old, familiar things,
• They do this by constructing analogies that
bridge the gap between the unfamiliar and
familiar.

3. The limits of analogies
• Analogies are a lot like bridges. There are
limits to how far they can stretch, and they will
collapse under excessive tension.
• The more tenuous an analogy, the less weight
a learner can place on it before it falls
through.

4. Native understanding
• Bridges are only a pathway to a destination.
Similarly, analogies are only a means to an
end. In this case, that end is a comprehensive
mental model that gives learners a sense of
familiarity to the concepts they are learning.
• We can refer to this end as a "native
understanding"

5. Building effective
analogies
• A bridge is only useful if it can be crossed.
• Every analogy has to be custom-built to the
user's schema.

6. Teachers and
designers
• Teachers build a separate bridge for each user.
Each bridge is built to reach out to the exact
schema of the user. Teachers then lead each user
across the bridge.
• Designers build a single bridge that is accessible
to most users. They leave the job of reaching out
to each individual user to the teacher.
• Designers make the job of the teacher easier.

7. Making one analogy for
everyone.
• Who is the lowest common denominator in
your target audience?
• What does this person know?
• What does this person not know?
• What does this person think they know?