The Website User's Conceptual Model

[web-designer]

The Website User's Conceptual Model

Understanding the user's perspective.

The user's conceptual model of a system is a mental image that each user subconsciously forms as he or she interacts with the system. People create mental models by putting together sets of perceived rules and patterns in a way that explains a situation. A typical person cannot draw or describe his or her mental models and in many situations the person is not even aware that these mental models exist.

A mental model does not necessarily reflect a situation and its components accurately. Still, a mental model can help people predict what will happen next in a given situation, and it serves as a framework for analysis, understanding, and decision-making.

The user's conceptual model is based on each user's expectations and understanding of what a system provides in terms of functions and objects, how the system responds when the user interacts with it, and the goals the user wants to accomplish during that interaction. These expectations, understandings, and goals are influenced by the user's experiences, including interaction with other systems, such as typewriters, calculators, and video games.

Because each user's conceptual model is influenced by different experiences, no two conceptual models are likely to be the same. Each user looks at a website from a slightly different perspective.

The challenge for the interface designer is to design an interface that users find predictable and intuitive when each user is approaching the interface from a different perspective. To come as close as possible to matching users' conceptual models, website designers should find out as much as they can about users' skills, motivations, the tasks they perform, and their expectations. This process involves:

• using resources such as task analysis, surveys, customer visits, and user requirements lists
  
• incorporating information that users provide into the website design
  
• conducting usability tests
  

This is an iterative process that may require many cycles. As the website design progresses, users may identify aspects of the interface that are difficult to learn, that are counter-productive, or aspects they simply do not like.

Through interaction with the website, users' conceptual models may be expanded, which in turn may cause them to realize new requirements that they had not thought of before. As users provide this level of information to the website designer, the picture of their conceptual models will become clearer.

Conceptual models of an object-oriented website consist of the objects, properties, behaviors, and relationships of those objects, that are involved in the user's interaction with the system.

When users first interact with a new interface, they are likely to attempt to understand its operation in terms of roles and relationships they already understand. In other words, we each carry with us a current conceptual model. Where existing models lead to correct expectations, the model is reinforced and the user will feel the interface is intuitive. When results are not as expected, the user may rationalize by inventing new roles and relationships in their model, in order to explain observed behavior.

Website Users' conceptual models constantly evolve as they interact with an interface. Just as users influence the design of a product, the website interface design influences and modifies users' concepts of the system. Designers can help users develop an accurate conceptual model by using well defined distinctions between objects and by being consistent across all aspects of the interface.

In any case, the distinctions between objects must be clear and useful, and the interface must be consistent. Otherwise, the users' conceptual models will be modified in ways other than those intended by the website interface designer.