Mental Models: Design for What Users Believe
A mental model is the user's internal story of how your UI works, based on past experiences, not your design spec. This is why users expect your site to work like others they've used. The footgun is assuming users share your expert model; they don't.
A mental model is the user's internal story about how your UI works, based on their past experiences, not your design spec. It's their belief, not the objective truth. This explains why users expect your shopping cart to act like Amazon's—their model is built from patterns seen elsewhere. The biggest footgun is the designer-user gap: assuming users share your detailed, expert mental model. They don't, and will make mistakes when your design breaks convention.
Read the original → nngroup.com
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