100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People, 2nd Edition

31 People Create Mental Models

Imagine that you’ve never seen a Kindle, but I’ve just handed you one and told you that you can read books on it. Before you turn on the Kindle, before you use it, you have a model in your head of what reading a book on the device will be like. You have assumptions about what the book will look like on the screen, what things you will be able to do, and how you will do them—things like turning a page or using a bookmark. You have a mental model of reading a book on the Kindle, even if you’ve never done it before.

What that mental model in your head looks and acts like depends on many things. If you’ve used an electronic device to read a book before, your mental model of reading a book on a Kindle will be different ...