program selection system

What’s a mental model? Those in the field of cognitive research have been defining mental models for a few decades. The term “mental model” has come to mean “a mental representation.” The mental models described in this presentation are representations of people’s behavior, philosophies, and emotion around how they accomplish something, regardless of which tools they use. Aligned with the ways you support users, mental models provide a clear roadmap of where your organization should invest its energies, and also where it shouldn’t, allowing you to stretch your limited resources.

In this presentation, Indi Young, author of the book, Mental Models, will teach you how to better understand user motivations before making decisions about software design. They will provide an information architecture from users’ tasks that will last 10 years, and get everyone from discordant team members to busy executives on the same page with respect to design and strategy.

After this presentation, you’ll come away with an understanding of how mental models have helped organizations from a variety of industries, and be able to create your own mental models right away to improve your web sites and applications. You’ll understand the pros and cons of mental models, and how they fit with other user experience design methods.