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Mental models and the evolution of an idea

Michael J. Fordham
UX Collective
Published in
4 min readMar 10, 2019

One problem I always wrestle with when designing a new user interface is trying to balance innovation with usability.

For some projects, making the application as easy to use as possible is of the highest priority, but how could we do that?

One method is to utilise mental models when designing.

What is a mental model?

A mental model is essentially a set of expectations users have about how your product will function and behave based on their usage of other products. For example; let’s imagine we’re making a new social networking site, you’ll probably want to implement some sort of method of 'liking' a post or giving it a heart. This is because other popular social networks like Facebook and Instagram have created this sort of functionality and users now begin to expect a way to react to a post (other than commenting). We — as designers of this social network — know that our user’s mental model will likely be imprinted by their usage of other social networks, and so they will understand what liking a post does before they have even done it on this new theoretical site.

Another example of a mental model could be with Snapchat. When they first released their disappearing-image sharing app, users of it generally had a mental model built around how we share…

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Published in UX Collective

We believe designers are thinkers as much as they are makers. Curated stories on UX, Visual & Product Design. https://linktr.ee/uxc

Written by Michael J. Fordham

Software engineer interested in the future of innovative UX. I mainly write about design, development, data and AI. www.michaeljfordham.com

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