The Objective and the Subjective
The clearest statement of the interface's own theory: a spy has an outer self and an inner one, and the game draws each in a different hand.
The Objective is the outer world seen from above, the city and its people. The Subjective is the inner layer, spread across the menus and the heads-up display, and it is where the psyche is handled: raising skills, reinforcing thoughts, changing clothes. During dramatic encounters the Subjective intrudes on the Objective as illustrated overlays, because training slows perception while a move is chosen.
Two metaphors follow from that. The journal is a real notebook rather than a tidy log, scribbled at angles and illustrated differently each playthrough according to how situations were handled. The inventory is a scrapbook, on the reading that a spy's identity is a collage of lives, so what a change of clothes means is left to the player.