
Mental Models

mature dating goal.
Indi Young • Mental Models
What is this a euphamism for?
Michael Bierut, a respected visual designer, said this about luck during an interview[3] with Adaptive Path founder Peter Merholz: “It’s a dirty secret that much of what we admire in the design world is a byproduct not of ‘strategy’ but of common sense, taste, and luck. Some clients are too unnerved by ambiguity to accept this and create gargantuan
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Try to rely on your audience segments themselves for the greatest distinctions. For example, a company I worked with was sure there was a difference in the way people interacted with Human Resources based on their level of experience with the web. I pointed out that web experience had nothing to do with finding out your vacation balance, so we
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So much of this feels entirely arbitrary. In this HR example, computer-savvy may make a marked difference in how separate demogrphics wish to access their vacation balance.
To create a mental model, you talk to people about what they’re doing, look for patterns, and organize those patterns from the bottom up into a model.
Indi Young • Mental Models
The project leader should also interview stakeholders about the organization’s mission, long-term strategies, objectives, predictions, perceived challenges, places where things didn’t go well in the past, strengths and weaknesses of the internal structure, and who the decision-makers are. Record the interviews. Look for patterns in what various
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experience is the product we deliver, and the only thing that our customers care about.”
Indi Young • Mental Models
So my first rule about interviewing was to concentrate on what the person is trying to do and not on the product itself.
Indi Young • Mental Models
The verb+noun phrases all need to be in present tense. No gerunds — they just complicate things. “Targeting” should be “target.” “Convincing” should be “convince.” Also, use the first person, to preserve the immediacy of the tasks.
Indi Young • Mental Models
A mental model for a particular topic is, in essence, an affinity diagram of user behaviors.