Mental Model
What is it?
A mental model is a set of beliefs about how something works in the real world. Users interact with systems based on these beliefs.
The top part of the model represents a person’s actions, thoughts, philosophies and emotions. The bottom half represents the ways the system or organization serves (or doesn’t serve) those concepts.
Who uses it?
UI Designers and Developers use an Alignment Diagram to spot gaps in the system offering vs. the user’s mental model. It is a collaborative tool that is used to help model the system to meet user expectations and determine features and functionality that are needed.
Project Managers can use an Alignment Diagram to help prioritize features of the system.
How It Works
- Perform Task Based Audience Segmentation, a technique that defines the target audience by the tasks they perform to achieve a goal.
- Non Directed Interviews are completed with user types identified in the first step.
- Segment Into Mental Spaces and Task Groups. Using data from steps one and two, create the Alignment Diagram by segmenting mental spaces and task groups, aligning the two groups.
- Re-evaluate Audience Segments based on the results of the Alignment Diagram to double check your results.
Getting More Information
This post is an edited extract from Leah Buley’s site IA One Sheeters with contributions from Tom Dell’Aringa. I am using the One Sheeter concepts here to showcase what I do as an IA and show examples of my work.
