User Interface Design for Mere Mortals

5

How Users Behave

Those who cannot tell what they desire or expect, still sigh and struggle with indefinite thoughts and vast wishes.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Topics Covered in This Chapter

The Psychology of User Actions

Knowledge: Brain Versus World

Task Structures

Conscious and Subconscious Behavior

Transforming Difficult Tasks into Simple Ones

Creating a Conceptual Model

Now that you’ve learned about good user design and what it takes to build both a good user interface and good user documentation, you need to understand how users behave so you can build a software product, hardware product, or Web product to meet your users’ needs. When designers approach the design of a product or documentation unaware of their users’ mindset, a product can ...