Design of close user psychological model

On the psychological model, the last issue of interactive design in the monthly Bulletin of the information architecture of several principles (Part I) (internal information, not disclosed. has been described and explained with great rigour. Thinking about our real life and the design of the actual product, here we want to talk about the psychological model.

In the process of designing a product, we often have the idea: "Here, it can be achieved by educating the user." "There is the idea of the time, often feel that the current design is not easy enough to understand, there may be users do not understand, then, we education ~

First of all, to educate users, this is not good enough to say. We should be user-centric to design, depending on the user for God, which means to respect the user, do we worship God need us to education?

Of course, with the application of the Internet more and more complex, want users to see it, even without looking can guess that is not realistic. There is a saying in design-"The ability of the user to learn". We need to determine what the user can learn, and what is not, by the user's research, or by a confident guess. Instead of sending everything that is not well designed, you want to educate your users.

So, what is the user can learn? If we can list a large set of design modules, make sure that they are the user can learn, and then in the design of specific products combined with these modules ... This is certainly the ideal, but it is obviously unrealistic. At least I can't do that.

So what can we do? Mental models are a good idea- the design that conforms to the user's mental model is more easily learned .

The product concept Apple is trying to create is a good example of a mental model.
A few years ago, the most high-performance desktop in Apple products was named G series, G3,g4,g5 ... This type of desktop Apple is now called Mac Pro.

There used to be a more populist product called the imac, which now has the same name as Mac Pro and the imac, which has been renamed the G4 and G5. In addition, there are other products-mac Mini. That is, all desktops have a Mac name. And all the Apple notebooks are called MacBook. So when I want to buy an apple desktop, it's easy to judge: "I want to buy a Mac," to buy a notebook is to buy a MacBook. The time to learn about Apple's products is not shortened.

Such product conceptual design is easier to understand than other notebook manufacturers complex naming, easier to learn. If you're not familiar with the ThinkPad, maybe you don't know the difference between the T series and the R series, what is the X series?

Science squirrel will be a scientific knowledge of the blog, which has a translation of "more strange than we think," which refers to such an example: In a stone, we would usually imagine it is a lot of very small stone atoms stacked closely. In fact, one atom, only the nucleus is solid, and the large space outside the nucleus is empty, our belief is wrong.
About the structure of atoms, in fact, we have learned in the middle school, high school, but we still have the wrong understanding, this is why? Because this misconception is enough to guide our real life, even easier to guide our real life. That is to say, the mistaken understanding is our mental model.

I bought an electric clipper about 2.5 ago to shave my hair. (Yes, my bald head was shaved by myself.) ）

The side is the switch, push forward is off, push backwards is actuated.
I use every two weeks on average, and 2.5 of the time is about 60 times. Use each time, repeatedly switch 2-3 times. This multiple use, until the most recent use, I will still push back when I want to shut down (actually it's starting). My mental model is always forward (the direction of the knife) is to make a machine work, there is the meaning of promotion. And the backward is withdrawal force, similar to the meaning of the drastic, so I always can not adapt, always will be wrong. Of course someone might be on the contrary to my mental model, and the design would be good for him. However, I have always believed that my instinctive reaction comes from a universal thinking that is innate to humans, otherwise, how can 2.5 of the time I am always wrong, am I stupid?