what's a mental model?

mental models and their place in the design process

With nearly 20 years working with the Internet and the World Wide Web, Taten has seen many things come and go. One of the newest and most innovative ways that we have seen of addressing audience needs and segmentation in website design is the concept of the Mental Model.

Taten recently had the opportunity to host a short half day "speed workshop" on the concept of Mental Models as pioneered by US software engineer Indi Young.

Indi was visiting Australia to hold workshops in Sydney and Melbourne, but took time out of her busy schedule to meet with some of Taten's clients at our offices in South Melbourne.

In essence, a Mental Model is how users think about and approach their tasks and goals. It represents the way in which users do something - for example, how they solve a problem, or complete a process. You can make a mental model of just about anything someone does, from how they make coffee in the morning, to how they brush their teeth, and how they decide whether to mail or FedEx something.

At Taten, we believe the Mental Model concept, if understood and applied in the right way, will have far reaching implications for information architecture and website design. Why? Because it puts the focus of website design on understanding what the user – or customer – wants from the website or online channel – not on what the IT or Marketing department think they should be providing.

In the following extract from her recently released book Mental Models - Aligning Design Strategy with Human Behavior, Indi says that while there is no single methodology for creating the perfect product, you can increase your odds by understanding users' reasons for doing things.

What is a Mental Model?*

“The deepest form of understanding another person is empathy…[which] involves a shift from…observing how you seem on the outside, to…imagining what it feels like to be you on the inside.”

Designing something requires that you completely understand what a person wants to get done. Empathy with a person is distinct from studying how a person uses something.

Empathy extends to knowing what the person wants to accomplish regardless of whether she has or is aware of the thing you are designing.

You need to know the person’s goals and what procedure and philosophy she follows to accomplish them. Mental models give you a deep understanding of people’s motivations and thought-processes, along with the emotional and philosophical landscape in which they are operating.

Mental models embrace anything from looking up a part number online to asking the guy at the hardware store how to mix epoxy. A mental model consists of several sections, with groups within each section

The methodology of Creating a Mental Model.

The methodology includes many sub-components. We bring them together in many different (adaptive!) ways based on the business needs of our clients.

In our work, we start with discovery, where we learn about the business plans and priorities of the stakeholders. At the same time, we determine our initial audience segmentation—how potential users of the application fall into groups. We base this segmentation on how we believe these groups will approach their tasks, not on demographics.

Next, we conduct interviews with people who fall into these audience segmentations. Through conversation, we urge them to tell us, in their own words, about their own approaches on the topic.

After we have interviewed enough people from each audience segment to see some patterns emerging, we start data analysis. We review every word each person said in the interviews and pull out their tasks.

When we see similar tasks, we bundle them together into conceptual task groups. From this, we start to see nuances between the component steps of the tasks and we track whether the different (say, international) audiences share these nuances.

We then create a mental model diagram of these conceptual task groups. This diagram, pulled from interview data, delivers us a visual representation of how users view their workflow.

Once we can see the workflow, we then conduct a content gap analysis. This process helps clients understand “the whole” and puts the project into perspective for them. We may find that the website or software doesn’t support a core task that audience members regularly perform. Alternately, a new design may provide a key tool that the audience can adopt into their mental model to make them more efficient.

From a business standpoint, these “content gaps” are all potential opportunities for discussion. It is always fantastic to see people grasp the connection between the audience’s mental model and the services the business provides.

Finally, we derive the architecture and navigation from the combination of the business requirements, the mental model, and the content gap analysis. The beauty of this is that we’ve derived the architecture from research. We avoid the “office politics” that often bog down a project.

One group of individuals, whose opinions and expertise another group may doubt, didn’t just create it. This ensures that the organization will launch the site instead of perishing in the details. This solid foundation also ensures a recognizable return on the investment, in a way that is favorable to the business.

If you would like more information on how Mental Models can be used to redefine your website design and architecture, contact Lynda Lim at Taten on (03) 9684 0288 or email enews@taten.com.au