Writing in the front
If you’ve never heard of the Kindle before, let me put this in your head: The Kindle is about reading. Then you will form different cognition in your mind. Some people will form the cognition of reading books, while others will form the cognition of smart devices such as mobile phones and pads. These different cognitive results are generated according to the different experiences and growth of each person. Take a simple example: A grew up in a dark environment, his perception of red is bloody and violent, while B grew up in a sunny environment, his perception of red is warm and positive. Therefore, the same thing, different people will have different cognition, this cognition is the mental layer. When doing the product design, almost all will involve the establishment of mental layer contains a wide range, such as product color, layout, framework, mascot design, etc., for the concept of mental models in the field of the Internet, is to apply the concept of psychology in product design, often make use of the user’s mental model to help us to know more about the user, It also helps us develop, adapt and research products. This article will tell you what is the mental layer of the product and how to design the mental layer of the product as a designer.
Theory of mind
First of all, I want to understand the concept of Theory of Mind. Theory of Mind (abbreviated as ToM) is a psychological term. It is the ability to understand the psychological state of oneself and the people around me. First of all, we cannot intuitively observe the minds of others. We can only assume that others have the same mind as ourselves by analogy, and observe the things around us according to this mind, so that we can react and act in line with social expectations.
For example: our colleague accidentally fell down, but we did not fall, but assume that the person who fell down is ourselves, then we will have pain, innocence and other emotions, want to get comfort feedback; Then we will have the response of going up to comfort and help colleagues, and go up to help colleagues up, give colleagues a certain comfort. So that the whole process behavior can be explained by the theory of mind.
Theory of mind takes place mostly in the subconscious mind, and most psychology uses intentionality as a measure of theory of mind. Most mammals can clearly express their thoughts and intentions, which are called first-order intentions. For example, a dog does not like to take a bath. If it is forced to take a bath, it will howl angrily to express its dissatisfaction. Being able to gauge the intentions expressed by other individuals, we call them secondary intentions, we can feel the anger of a dog, and know that it’s yelling at us because it doesn’t like bathing, and that’s something that most healthy humans have, and some primates like chimpanzees have; Level 3 intention refers to ponder a third party ideas, such as I think xiao Ming in unrequited love with the little red, I think the boss was angry because of late Ming, often use this ability in human normal social activities, so increasing down the fourth, the fifth such intention, there is only our subconscious, we is not easy to find.
Mental models
Mental models are theories of mind based on the assumption that an individual attempting to make a reasonable explanation of something will develop a workable approach, with limited domain knowledge and limited information processing ability, to produce a reasonable explanation. A lot of it is simply your prediction of how things are going to be, how you “want” things to be, that’s not a mental model, how you “think” things are going to be, that’s your mental model.
As mentioned earlier, I think xiao Ming in unrequited love with the little red, my attitude by xiao Ming little red suddenly became good, xiao Ming saw little red face will turn red, through my emotion, will, feeling, perception, memory, thinking, etc. Judgment is given: whom I “think” xiao Ming and small red, this is my mental model.
This leads psychologist Norman (1983) to generalize six characteristics of mental models that are not independent of each other:
Incomplete: Most mental models that people have of phenomena are Incomplete. This is easy to understand, everyone’s growth experience, feelings, will and so on are different, so some people think red represents bloody and violent, while others think red represents enthusiastic and positive.
2. Limitations: People are Limited in their ability to implement mental models. This is where the constraints are interesting, they can be objective or they can be subjective; Take Xiao Ming Xiao Hong as an example. If I love Xiao Hong, my subjective consciousness will affect my judgment on Xiao Ming’s crush on Xiao Hong, and I will not have the judgment result that I “think” Xiao Ming loves Xiao Hong.
Unstable: People tend to forget details of mental models that are Unstable, especially if they haven’t used them for a while. This is easy to explain, a lot of things do not need to forget, let alone your brain processing a lot of things, a period of time do not use your brain will selectively forget.
4. No Boundaries: Similar mechanisms often confuse one another. Mental models have no clear boundaries, and the same triggers can lead to mental model confusion, resulting in problematic judgments and, in turn, problematic behaviors.
5. Unscientific: People adopt superstitious patterns even when they know they are not necessary. This is easy to understand, life is often inadvertently brought over, such as judging by various signs that a person has a cold, think he should take some medicine, because it is not too serious “procrastinate” superstitious mode to take judgment.
Parsimonious: People take more actions that could be avoided through mental planning. It is very simple to understand that when it comes to forming habits or planning, there is no need to spend time to judge each time. For example, in product design, when users see the consciousness that the green button represents clickable and the red button represents delete warning, it is because of the “natural” results brought by habits and mental planning.
Mental models
A mental model is a mental model, it’s the same thing, but it’s the subconscious behavior that forms the mental model. Ideally, the user’s mental model matches the performance model in the product. But in fact, different user groups, their mental model is different also, communication between the user and the designer only through product platform itself, so the users’ mental models of how product produced data through the platform will be feedback to the designer, through such data structures, a concept of mental models, and then the designers design products that meet the conceptual model, That’s what most people want.
The mind designs products
Different products convey different minds to users, and the main user groups are also different. The conceptual model of expression established by each product is also different, but the mental model established by similar products can find some common points. From the moment we open a product, it starts to model our mind. Here is a collection of similar products on the market to see how they model our mind.
The mental layer of e-commerce products
It is not hard to see from the above figure that products such as Juhuasuan.com, Pindoduo and Bargain Street stimulate users’ purchase desire through strong visual language and copywriting, such as “time-limited seconds kill” and “6 blocks, 6 seconds kill”, etc. The main users of such products are price-sensitive users. Therefore, the product should establish “time limit”, “second kill”, “coupon red envelope” and other mental cognition for them, to create a special cheap buy or buy it or not, you buy it and give you a red envelope coupon super cost-effective atmosphere, so as to achieve the ultimate goal of prompting users to buy goods.
The products sold by Taobao, JINGdong and Netease Kaola.com have a wide range of dimensions, and the user groups they target are generalized. It is difficult to establish such mental models of expression, so they are presented to users in the form of products themselves. The color selection is based on the “recognized” mental model of orange, red and other perceptual colors that bring emotional excitement to users. By pushing classified goods to create a shopping atmosphere and bring users the cognition of shopping in the mall, the same ultimate goal is to urge users to buy goods.
The core products of Tmall, Netease Yanxuan and Vipshop are brand and product quality. For example, Yanxuan wants to bring users good quality products and sells them after careful selection. Therefore, by uploading strict specifications and icon layout and other elements, it establishes rigorous and good quality mental models to attract users with high requirements for quality. Tmall and Vipshop’s main brand strategy highlights the texture and authenticity of the brand through the control of visual elements and product maps, and gives users the recognition that they are right to buy authentic brand products from us. On the one hand, it attracts users who pursue brands for consumption, and on the other hand, it establishes design experience of reflection.
They are still selling things. The products like Syku, GUCCI and Artificial are mainly selling high-end luxuries. Therefore, through the large area of white space, black, white and gray and the control of the product map, the purpose is to establish the mental model of expensive and high-end luxuries and create the cognition that commodities are expensive and scarce luxuries. Naturally the main user group is the demand for luxury goods users.
Eventually sell things, but the little red book, is the most beautiful things, Lyst these attributes are social and contents of the main, followed by selling the goods, so we opened the first to see this kind of product is content, whether the waterfall flow layout, or a new card interaction, or basic module together, certainly tell users – we push is content. The operation mode of such products is to attract users to click on the content to browse and push products to users and give users a link to buy. Then the mental model established is of course the cognitive model of content information + social interaction, which brings different experiences to users.
The mental layer created by reading products
Similar to today’s headlines, zhihu, 36 kr, and other products, because of the rich information and huge, and the layout structure found are Feeds flow design, at the top have different classification module, such products rich knowledge is set up to users’ mental models, an endless amount of information, so bring endless cognitive user community knowledge, that users immersed themselves to the product.
For similar reading products, Curiosity Daily highlights the construction of content quality, such as navigation bar buoys, two category labels and other design methods, expands the spacing and layout, and establishes the mental model that the pushed content is interesting and interesting to users. The latter two convey cognition to users through the creation of content. Light reading focuses more on the quality of content and pictures to attract users, while single reading focuses on text and content to attract users.
The mental layer created by entertainment products
At present, short video is the hottest product of “Kill time”. Next year or in the future, 5G era, short video will enter a continuous explosion period. Douyin, Kuaishou, Weishi, Huoshan and so on are all products with the most traffic in the market at present. Apart from other levels, we analyze each product based on the mental layer established by each product. Douyin’s father must have been the first. At that time, there was a popular Internet phrase “Douyin in the South and Douyin in the North”. Douyin appeared as “the lateler takes the lead”, and the secret of its success depended on douyin’s investment in user psychological models. Because douyin’s interactive form is very domineer, users are forced to watch the content when they open the product, so the quality of the content pushed to users on screens 1 to 5 must be very high. Douyin has invested a lot of money to create content for the first few screens, in order to retain users. When you use the product for the first time, the quality of the content on the first few screens will depend on how much money you have to invest in it, and if the content is good enough, people will keep scrolling and get engaged. And quickly threw the content to the user fully doing UGC, so interactive form can’t like trill so bossy, because of UGC quality control, if force users to view some of the content of quality is bad, so is to keep the user is illusory, so quickly form of interaction is to let users choose himself interested in the content of the watch, As a result, Kuaishou has a user-made cover that encapsulates the design of the video content. Over time, a mental model of “Douyin high-end, Kuaishou low” has been established for users. Although it is an illusion, it also confirms the incompleteness and limitations of the mental model. As for the reason why Wevision has so much traffic as Tencent, it is still unable to do douyin’s father. That is because Wevision leaves the content to users to make UGC by themselves, but uses Douyin’s dominant interactive form. (The screenshots in the picture are the first screenshots of the product. I choose little sister anyway, what about you?)
Music products to QQ music, netease cloud music main market, QQ music and netease cloud music music playback interface, QQ music mainly focus on the content of the visual display, netease cloud music to use forms, have qualitative feeling more some, both to the user’s mental model is not the same. Recently, new Star MOO music has a high level of appearance, and the interaction mode is very interesting. I highly recommend you to try it. MOO’s mental model is young and trendy, and also takes advantage of the short video craze. When I first opened the product, I thought it was an airplane copy of Bobe. I was truly amazed.
For video products, Tencent Video and Youku bring different mental experience. The mental model established by Tencent Video is simple and clear, allowing users to directly find the content they want to watch. Youku provides a better immersive experience, and channel Icon provides a stylish and interesting atmosphere. The feeling brought to the user group by eye is more high-end, and the mental model created by eye is more novel.
The above analysis some flow more user experience a great of products on the market, there are more products have different mental models, so humanized design is based on the user’s psychology and behavior, to establish the concept of mental models, the next step ahead of the user to predict user behavior, bring users different cognitive experience, To provide the best solution, this logic can be linked to smooth experience design.
How to do a good job of product mental design
The elements of a product include text size, color selection, layout layout, etc., all of which are to establish a mental representation model for the product. Here is how designers should design a mental representation model for the product.
1. Define product attributes
Whether we design a product from scratch or redesign it, the first thing we do is define the properties of the product and build a conceptual mental model. From scratch product designers can through the user survey some preparation work, such as simulation of product a mental model of the concept of refined product keywords, and want to let the user how a cognitive, with version 1.0 online pay attention to mental layer in terms of data collection, after which a new version of the design and the iteration; Project revision is the same, because only data can prove the design, and more accurate performance model can be established by refining more accurate product keywords through user feedback, so this step is the core key step.
Define product attributes
Night Talk – By Fiasco
2. Collect elements that fit the product
Assume that your product through the survey found that more than 50% of users are women, and even proportion than men too much, so the mental models of this product you can set up, the feminine direction at the same time also want to collect some elements about the feminine, is a little too one-sided just say so, because it has a different different solutions, implementation technique also has a lot of kinds. For example, in addition to femininity, there are other product attributes, such as high-end style, fashion style, cute style, etc., all of which have different elements. What designers need to do is to collect these related attributes and integrate them into their own products. For example, mascot design for products, emotional design, deepen the brand impression, but also better to establish a mental model.
Mascot design of various products
3. Refine your mental model
Whether the design is reasonable and whether it can solve the pain points of users need data to verify. By collecting some data before and after the revision, such as the increase and decrease of users and the feedback of users, the conceptual mental model of users can be more clearly defined, so as to constantly improve the mental model of the product. The implementation model is application-centric, the mental model is user-centric, and the performance model floats in front of both ends, which together determine the user experience. If the presentation model is more biased towards the implementation model, it will seriously weaken the user’s ability to learn and use the software. Naturally, the more difficult it is to understand, the worse the experience perception is, and the illusion of “what kind of software is so difficult to use” will occur. If the user contact point should be based on the design of the mental model, the more performance model to mental models, the easier it is for the user to understand the product function, easy to use, practical, and then for users will feel the product is easy to use and easy to understand, nature experience perception, the better, that is, as a designer to do the balance between the two relations.
4. Business value is the core
Everything is done to realize the value of the product itself. Whether the user experience, or visual representation, these belong to methods, the designer’s main products is to help achieve business value, such as your product even if you have the good interaction and user experience, has the good visual effect, finally unable to realize the commercial value, no one is using this product, it was all in vain. Therefore, with the purpose of enhancing the commercial value of the product, the designer establishes the mental conceptual model, optimizes the user experience and improves the visual expression, so as to truly realize the fundamental value of the designer.
conclusion
In product design, we should not only pay close attention to the information on the product structure, but also pay attention to the expression of the product itself, the performance model and the mental model is close to, in the range of expected, as much as possible to ensure results through repeated feedback and data, based on the user’s psychology and behavior is derived, the next step to predict user behavior, ahead of the user To provide better feedback and service, only by combining product task analysis and user habit research can we dig into the needs of users and design for users in a real sense.
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References:
· Redefining User Experience, Hu Xiao, 2018. Tsinghua University Press
· What about mental Models? Kaki JackieLiang link: http://www.woshipm.com/pmd/367794.html
· Theory of Mind — Baidu Baike
· Mental model — Baidu Baike
· Mental Model — Baidu Baike