Effective Mental Models for Code and Systems

I have come to believe that systems thinking without mental models is like the DC-3’s radial air-cooled engine without wing flaps. Just as the Boeing 247’s engineers had to downsize their engine because it lacked wing flaps, systems thinking without the discipline of mental models loses much of its power. The two disciplines go naturally together b

The key to effective tool use is clear communication with the model about what each tool does and when to use it.

a mental model is simply a representation of how something works.

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.

But uncovering people’s mental models is not easy. Since we designers are usually not the intended target audience, we can’t make decisions based on our own mental models. And we also can’t gain insights into people’s internal representations of the world simply by asking them, because according to Argyris and Schön’s “theories of action” research