• Archives of design research
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.385-394
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• 2003

An investigation by KRNIC (Korea Network Information Center) on the real state of usage of internet has shown that 96.9％ of children investigated had experiences of using internet. Especially the firstly ranked item that had been answered by children as a necessity of internet was 'Studying to solve tasks' rated by 83.9％. As seen from the research result, the need as a homework sonics is actually so dominant that it cannot be ignored when considering the profitability at the area of education contents, but any profound research has not been accomplished yet. Internet has been positioned as a more effective and fruitful learning tool, and also all activities done by users for exploring informations and choosing learning items under the on-line circumstances are based on the successive mutual reactions between users and computers. Up to now much of the web based learning circumstances has been introducing the User Interface using metaphor, and the same is found dominantly from the sites for children. But in spite of the availability of metaphor mentioned above the current status is much lack of profound researches about metaphor interface; and what is more, in the case of the site for elementary school students the gap of the ability recognizing metaphor is very large between lower classes and higher classes according to the degree of mental growth but that is used to be simply ignored, then a common concept is adapted to interface for all grades of classes and moreover for infant and kindergarten without any objections. Based on foregoing problems this research has put the main focus on the groping and presenting desirable directions on the prospect design of interface for children-oriented sites by analyzing the status of practical usage of metaphor interface in the field of the sites for children-oriented learning sites with concentration upon homework supporting domains.