Metaphors in the Dual World

Metaphor is a powerful tool used by designers both historically and today as a way to make meaning. Context plays a central role in making metaphors. Metaphors can become an embodiment of the contextual data used to create them as seen in digital twins. Embodied Interaction serves as a lens to understand meaning making with these embodied metaphors. The author seeks to use spatial context to create meaningful experiences using eXtended Reality (XR). A prototypical experience was created over time using findings of several other prototypes and workshop findings. The resulting artefact was a dual world. This is an XR experience that focuses on interactions that are informed by and affect both the physical world and the digital metaphor that overlays it. A physical twin is an object from the digital world that is made manifest in the physical. The XR experience used a physical twin to act as a conduit for data to pass between worlds. Embodied interaction in dual worlds creates lasting meaning and metaphor in physical space.