Boxes And Arrows : The Design Behind the Design

Article Idea:

Get versus Bring: The Two Mental Models of the Web

suggested by Hal Siegel on 2010/02/23

Having worked as a web designer for about fifteen years, I’ve always felt that there seemed to be two mental models that drive practically all user-interfaces. I finally wrote this up as a blog post, but I thought it could be further investigated as a proper story. Here is a summary:

Mental models are one of the fundamental elements of interaction design. If there is a usability problem with an interface, it is often the result of a breakdown between a user’s mental model of the system (ie, how she thinks it works) versus the way it actually works.

For every conceivable interface there is then at least one, if not a variety, of mental models that go with it. However, when it comes to designing for the web, I believe there are two models that supercede all others.

Simply put, those two models are the ideas of “going and getting something yourself” versus “having something brought to you”.