Leonardo da Vinci Partnerships ProjectGUI USABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY:

EXCHANGING KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCES

Mental Models

Maciej Laskowski

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission under the Lifelong Learning Programme

Leonardo da Vinci Partnerships ProjectGUI USABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY:

EXCHANGING KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCES

80% of the overall usability comes from a match between the CONCEPTUAL MODEL of the application and the User’s MENTAL MODEL. Conceptual model of the application:

Navigational structure (task structure) Content Language and labelling

Mental Model of the user: How the user THINKS navigation should be structured, what

content she is expecting to find and what’s the language and labelling she understands.

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission under the Lifelong Learning Programme

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Introduction

Leonardo da Vinci Partnerships ProjectGUI USABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY:

EXCHANGING KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCES

Characteristics of the mental model Everyone comes with a mental model This model is usually made up of past experiences Mental models are not always attuned to reality Mental models establish expectations, which drive

and make up the behaviour Mental models are not always easy to explain

How does a musician play an instrument? How does a doctor operate?

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission under the Lifelong Learning Programme

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Mental Models

Leonardo da Vinci Partnerships ProjectGUI USABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY:

EXCHANGING KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCES

Mental models are there even if you are not aware of them What happens if you see a door with a handle? You pull.

And if it has none? You push. What happens if you are the co-driver in a car and you

sense that the driver is going too fast? You try to brake. In most european countries people drive on the right.

However in some countries they drive on the left. Have you tried to drive in a country in which the sense of circulation is different?

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission under the Lifelong Learning Programme

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Mental Models

Leonardo da Vinci Partnerships ProjectGUI USABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY:

EXCHANGING KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCES

Mental models interfere when you least expect it Unless you are Polish you will probably have no

clue about what this sign means…

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission under the Lifelong Learning Programme

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Mental Models

Leonardo da Vinci Partnerships ProjectGUI USABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY:

EXCHANGING KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCES

Mental Models are being consistently dismissed despite the evidence Please, watch:

http://connect.humanfactors.com/video/online-checkout-in-real-life

Instead, how should we design a checkout process? Please, read:

http://www.asktog.com/columns/081Registration.html

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission under the Lifelong Learning Programme

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Mental Models

Leonardo da Vinci Partnerships ProjectGUI USABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY:

EXCHANGING KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCES

These slides are made available under the license Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs CC BY-NC-ND. More information about license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/.These slides were created under Leonardo da Vinci Partnerships Project 2012-1-PL1-LEO04-28181 GUI USABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY: EXCHANGING KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCES (http://usability-accessibility.org/).

Instead, how should we design a checkout process? Please, read: http://www.asktog.com/columns/081Registration.html

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission under the Lifelong Learning Programme

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Attributions