Mental Models - an HCI Concept

I am going to write about one of the most important concepts in HCI, and that is Mental models. In an article called Mental Models from the Nielsen Norman Group the topic Mental models is explained and also what impact it has on design processes(https://www.nngroup.com/articles/mental-models/).

The main definition of mental models is “A mental model is what the user believes about the system at hand”. It is important to remember that mental models are in flux and not fixed, this because they exist in every users brain. The users can gain experiences that change their mental models and we can therefore not link one specific user to a specific mental model. Mental models are also based on belief, not facts, which implies that two different users can have different mental models regarding your design.

Designers often make the mistake and create perfect models just because they are involved in their own design and are not capable to see their work from a user’s perspective. Another very common mistake made by users due to mixed-up mental models is not being able to make a distinction between different features in a design such as:

•  Icons vs. applications
• Local vs. remote info
• A window vs. an application 

Different persons have different Mental Models

Living in a digital world where technology develops in an intense speed it makes it difficult for people to adapt to changes. People tend to stick to the things they know well and this causes inertia in users’ mental models.  For many designers this may be seen as a reason to be conservative and not come up with new interaction styles. However it is crucial to innovate your work and therefore when a new approach is superior to the old one it should be embraced.

Mental models are extremely helpful when trying to make sense of usability problems. The mistakes users make when using a specific design is often associated to the mental models they have created. If it is possible to change and iterate the design it might be a good idea to make the system adapt to users’ mental models. Otherwise one can always try to improve users’ mental models. This can be done by better explanations or clearer labels.

The different think alouds we have conducted during our design process have given us insights into our users’ mental model. We have thereafter been able to change our design so that it fits their models better.