[Sigia-l] Conceptual models (again): metaphors or categories?

[Thomas Vander Wal]

Peter,

I don't know to what degree this will help you, but I ran into a similar 
issue and have used the following (still in rough form) as a seemingly 
helpful method of explaining to clients and others not germane to our world.

I have been using the model/metaphor of attraction to explain to 
sub-clients how the mental model works in building categories.  (I have 
a rough overview of the attraction model/metaphor on my site at 
http://www.vanderwal.net/essays/moa1.html ).  I found clients glazing 
over when talking about mental models, but seemed to understand the 
attraction metaphor.  

Essentially I explain to the client that the users have a set of terms 
they use to define the information they are seeking.  Terms that are 
identical or seem to be close to the term in the users mind will attract 
the user to click to seek more information.  The card sorting task is 
essentially users grouping items they believe are similar and would have 
a common attraction.  A user would be attracted to certain terms (to 
varrying degrees) if it seemed like it would bring the information they 
wanted closer to their screen.  Explaining to clients that categories 
are like magnetic rods that are points of attraction to not only the 
users, but also to the information and draw an attraction to related 
information.  The rods pull the inforation to themselves when the user 
activates the rod by clicking on it.  In this way pieces of information 
that have an attraction to more than one category rod could be found by 
more than one path.

Xerox Parc did have very helpful information on information scent posted 
and information foraging, but seem to have restricted access to that 
information.  These elements are similar but do not exend quite as far 
(i.e. the metaphor breaks and other metaphors have to be used to extend 
to understanding or explaining mental models or even out to Web Services).

All the best,
Thomas Vander Wal

www.vanderwal.net

PeterV wrote:

> Hi all,
> trying to understand better how conceptual and mental models are used. 
> I found Don Norman's description quite useful:
> http://www.acm.org/archives/wa.cgi?A2=ind0008A&L=chi-web&D=0&P=9325
>
> I also had a look at Adaptivepath's deliverables, where the mental 
> model they describe is about how the user organizes or *categorizes* 
> the tasks.
> http://www.adaptivepath.com/presentations/complete/
>
> Does anyone have examples or stories about how they describe/use 
> mental models of users when building websites? The Adaptivepath 
> approach (as described in their deliverables) focusses on grouping 
> tasks, finding *categories* that users use. I'm wondering about much 
> of the Xerox parc work, where it's more about *metaphors* users use, 
> like here
> http://hci.stanford.edu/bds/2-liddle.html
>
> So how do metaphors and categories fit in together in this whole 
> mental model thing? I can think of examples (almost any website I've 
> done) where finding categories that users use makes sense, but 
> metaphors is another story... Any reading material / ideas?
> PeterV
> http://petervandijck.net
>
>
>