Chris Hall - Blog #5

For an object with a personality that one can interact with, the user’s mental model will be how they think the object works or functions. In other words their mental model will be like a picture of how the object works. As Robert Hoekman says “it doesn’t have to be the truth, and usually isn’t, it just has to settle our heads enough to let us sleep at night”. This means that most users’ mental models of how something works will not be accurate, it just as to make since to them.

In contrast an implementation model is designed, as Hoekman says “usually, to please the geeks that create them”. This means, as Hoekman describes in his book, that they require much more knowledge of how the object works compared to a mental model. Indeed this extra knowledge also has to be accurate in order to accomplish your intended task. That is not to say that implementation models are bad, just that for the majority of the population they are not very useful.