Mental models

Javanshir Vahabzada
2 min readDec 17, 2022

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Mental models are the frameworks or mental representations that humans use to comprehend the world and how things function. Mental models are used in the user experience (UX) area to comprehend how customers perceive and engage with goods, programs, and services. UX designers may make their designs more user-friendly and intuitive by comprehending the mental models that people employ.

In UX design, mental models can be applied in a variety of ways, including:

  1. To comprehend user wants and goals: UX designers may develop designs that are in line with users’ mental models and make it simpler for users to achieve their goals by knowing the mental models that people use to accomplish their objectives and satisfy their needs.
  2. To anticipate user behavior: Mental models may assist UX designers in anticipating how consumers will act and engage with a certain product or service. This can aid designers in producing more user-friendly and intuitive designs.
  3. To produce user flows and interfaces: By comprehending the mental frameworks that users employ, designers may develop user flows and interfaces that are in line with these frameworks and facilitate users’ usage of the good or service.
  4. To test and validate designs: By giving consumers tasks to accomplish and seeing how they go about doing so, UX designers may utilize mental models to test and evaluate their ideas. Designers may use this to find any issues or holes in their designs and make the required corrections.

Overall, mental models are a valuable tool for UX designers as they help designers understand how people think about and interact with products, systems, and services, and use this understanding to create more intuitive and user-friendly designs.

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