The challenge of finding the perfect metaphor—one that’s clear, culturally sensitive, and future-proof—is what makes designing these miniature artifacts so fascinating. Look at any software interface and you’ll find a constellation of them, each trying to say something without saying a word. Early software icons mimicked real-world objects—phones, disks, folders—and as software matured, so did metaphors with stripped details. Reduced to a minimum, they became more abstract and conceptual representations.