Mental Models in UX - Meaning, Example, and Importance
Mental model is an individual's personal, cognitive understanding of how a product or system functions.
This mental representation can influence a user’s cognitive load, which is also known as the amount of mental effort required by users to navigate and comprehend a user interface (UI).
The concept of a mental model is necessary for designers to clearly understand as it dictates how users interact with UI elements. Recognizing this allows designers to incorporate affordances, which are features that suggest their functionality, and signifiers, which are visual cues indicating how a particular element functions.
Example of a mental model
Consider the process of designing a wireframe for a website that sells all kinds of shoes.
Drawing from users' mental models — built from their previous online shopping experiences — they likely anticipate certain features. For instance, they might expect to see a shopping cart icon, which is an affordance indicating where they can view selected items, like sneakers or high heels.
Similarly, a search bar is a common expectation which will users find specific products with ease. These key UI elements, also known as signifiers, directly guide and inform user interactions.
To enhance the user's intuitive understanding, designers might employ skeuomorphism in design. This approach involves designing digital elements to resemble their real-world counterparts.
For example, a digital notebook might look like a physical paper notebook. By mimicking these real-world visuals, designers can further align the digital interface with users' pre-existing mental models and make navigations feel more natural.
Why are mental models important?
Mental models set the baseline for users' interactions and expectations with a product. When these models align with a product's design, it reduces their cognitive load by ensuring you’ve created a smooth and efficient user journey.
However, misalignment can lead to design debt (the cumulative cost of not addressing design issues early on).
Designers often employ personas (fictional, detailed representations of user segments) to gain insights into various mental models.
Additionally, usability heuristics, sets of usability guidelines, can help craft user-friendly interfaces. The Gestalt principles, which are fundamental laws of perception, also guide how users interpret visual elements as organized groups or patterns.
How can UserBit help?
UserBit, being an all-in-one UX platform, provides a comprehensive suite of tools tailored for the UX workflow, with a particular emphasis on research.
Whether it's collaborating using our client portal or media and notes section, planning out your research based on your visual sitemaps, journey maps, or user flows, or letting you cross-reference data from multiple sources, UserBit ensures you’ll have a place to find and analyze all of your research findings.
