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Mental Models

Aligning design strategy with human behavior

Mental Models

By Indi Young. Rosenfeld Media, 2008.
Available in paperback and digital package (1-933820-06-3), digital (PDF) edition (ISBN 1-933820-19-5)

Mental Models

There is no single methodology for creating the perfect product—but you can increase your odds. One of the best ways is to understand users' reasons for doing things. Mental Models gives you the tools to help you grasp, and design for, those reasons. Adaptive Path co-founder Indi Young has written a roll-up-your-sleeves book for designers, managers, and anyone else interested in making design strategic, and successful.

"Indi Young’s mental models are the perfect way for your team to integrate your user’s perspective into your design. Indi has written a comprehensive guide for anyone who wants to make use of this power design technique. I’ll be giving this book out to all of our important clients and insisting they make it part of their process."
—Jared Spool, CEO & Founding Principal, User Interface Engineering

Mental Models is available in full-color paperback and digital (PDF) versions. Substantial supplemental content is available on this site, and all of the book's images can be downloaded from Flickr.

“Mental Models” Blog

Use Proper Case

Since I began doing task analysis and creating mental models, I have taken pleasure in creating diagrams that look and read as cleanly as possible. The details in producing a professional-looking diagram include capitalizing every title as proper case.

Over the past couple of years, I've noticed that not everyone uses proper case in their diagrams. Not all combers actually type this way, and, honestly, it takes a little more time to do so. I try to ignore it when I see it, but I have to admit that when I am working on a project with someone who does not capitalize words, I go in and spend a bit of time updating the diagram so that things look nice and neat. My associate, Eric Fain, just mentioned today, "I think it looks better to have tasks show up in the diagram in proper case." Yes! Better yet, he has a time-saving solution. He always does--that's why I hang out with him.

Eric says, "You can convert a cell to proper case by using a text function in Excel, =proper(cell#). What I generally do, so that I am not working with the results of formulas, is to create the proper case column next to the original, then copy and paste just the values in a third column and delete the original two. If you use this method, you will end up with some minor corrections, such as all letters after apostrophes will be capitalized, but correcting those minor ones will save enormous time rather than trying to make everything proper case by hand."

Long live properly formatted titles in the diagram!

New interview on Mental Models

Hi, Indi's publisher here. We've just published an interview with Indi by Victor Lombardi on the cutting edge of mental models. If you like what you read, why not sign up for her upcoming webinar (December 11, 1-2pm EST)?

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