UI Design – Metaphors
The latter half of the article (linked below), by Dan Bricklin (co-creator of VisiCalc), touches upon the big idea of the ‘Metaphor’ paradigm in user interface design. I think this part (near the very end) is key:
“This is not to say that tools cannot do things beyond the understanding of the users. Having “magic” under the covers is fine as long as it is presented in an understandable way to the user. For example, sound editing programs do mathematical transforms on the data whose theory would never be understood by most users, but the effects have useful names and can be tried to see what they do. Artists may not understand the chemistry of their paints, but they can still use them and do things unimagined by the paints’ creators.”
http://www.bricklin.com/metaphors.htm
Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines go into this as well (a lot of it isn’t Mac specific):
