Mental Model

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Mental Model: A small model of the reality that your mind creates to reason, anticipate about the future etc

Author of a book can structure sentences that can make the reader have ambiguous mental models

Similar to a reader of a passage of text, the user develops a mental model of how he/she thinks the system works through interaction of the system. This model is used to reason about the system, to anticipate system behaviour and to explain why the system reacts as it does.

Designer's mental model and a user's mental model should reflect each other

Designer has a conceptual model that teaches or makes the user understand the system. Mental model reflects what is understood by the user. If conceptual model and mental model are the same, then the designer has achieved his goal