Mental Model
What someone believes is going on inside the product.
Definition
A person's internal representation of how a system works, formed from prior experience and from the evidence the interface provides.
Craft convention. True because the industry converged on it. Breaking it costs familiarity, not correctness.
On this plate
In plain language
What someone believes is going on inside the product.
Example
Users believe a synced file lives in one place. The system maintains copies with a conflict policy, which is why conflict dialogs are confusing.
Local chart
TERM·009 · Region X · Grid D6
This entry and the entries it is stated to connect with. Each line is labelled with what the connection means.
Continue from here
Each link says what the connection is, so you can tell a principle from an alternative from a thing people mix this up with.
Deeper reading
The full entry behind this definition.
- Jakob's LawLAW·003 · Law
- Mental ModelsMOD·001 · Mental model
Related concept
Connected closely enough to change how you apply this.
- Conceptual ModelTERM·010 · Term
Nearby in the Atlas
Adjacent territory, found through shared tags rather than a stated link.