The desktop metaphor standardized, and thus limited, the ways information was presented. New ways of organizing personal information are spawning a great variety of new representations and visualizations.

The desktop metaphor is built around keyboarding and pointing. The multiplicity of devices of different sizes and functions forces designers to develop new modes and modalities of physical interaction techniques.

The desktop metaphor was designed for a standardized computational form factor, the workstation and laptop. The proliferation of new forms of computing devices both requires and exploits the information cloud to allow information to "follow the user".

Currently the most pervasive Computer Systems, such as Microsoft Windows and Mac OS, are based on the desktop metaphor. For many users and designers, these are the only digital work environments they have ever known. It is all too easy to assume that the desktop metaphor will always determine our experience of Computer Systems.

The desktop metaphor, which attempts to simplify common file operations by presenting them the familiär language of the paper-based world (paper documents become files, folders become directories, deletion is handled via the trashcan icon) had important advantages - particularly for new users (even though it was still necessary to explain to new users just how the electronic desktop is like a real one, why and how each "piece of paper" has to be named, how to eject a CD, and so forth). But the desktop metaphor also constrained our future Software design choices.

The desktop is the primary metaphor for the Macintosh interface. It appears to be a surface on which people can keep tools and documents. Several other metaphors are integrated into the desktop metaphor. It makes sense in the context of a desktop environment to include folders and a trash can (even though most trash cans don't sit on the desktop). Menus are an extension of the desktop metaphor. People can connect the idea of making choices from a computer menu with making choices from a restaurant menu. Although people don't keep restaurant menus on the edge of their desks, using the term menu in the computer environment reinforces the idea that people can use computer menus to make choices.

As opposed to its source domain, the physical office, the desktop metaphor is based on using the same surface - the screen - for both displaying and accessing Information. Physical desktops can be cluttered with individual documents and piles of papers, but we do not need to clear up these desktops to get to file cabinets, drawers, or bookshelves. People typically do not have to choose between making visible a desk or a file cabinet; they can see both and use them independently of each other. The users of modern Information technologies, on the other hand, have to use the same screen space for finding Information objects and for viewing their content. Both locating a document on a disc and editin^ the document make use of the same physical surface of a Computer screen.