Mental model diagrams are a way of visualising the internal representations people have about things (how they think and feel about something). The diagram is constructed based on qualitative user research.
Mental model diagrams are built bottom up in a hierarchical structure, through affinity mapping of interview insights: Task > Tower > Mental space (from concrete to abstract).
Documenting mental models continuously can help build a basis for future research and keep updating the existing models to be more accurate.
It can be complemented by a solution space, whe you can document how well solutions answer to specific parts of the problem space. But the focus of these diagrams should be on the problem space.
Mental model diagrams can be combined with the jobs-to-be-done framework.
These diagrams have longevity because people's reasoning about higher-level goals and the goals themselves don't change much over time (see Jobs to be done are relatively stable over time)
Tags: mental models product design user research
ID: 2021-0524-0726
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