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| Digging Beyond User Preferences |
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Google Tech Talks
July, 16 2008
ABSTRACT
Many of the applications you develop are
applications you would use. This makes it easy to
know what will work and what won't. At some point,
however, you'll find yourself developing something
that you would only occasionally use, and suddenly
you're treading in dark places. You know user
research is important, you know the experience of
using the product should be positive, if not
delightful. But sometimes the findings you get are
pretty difficult to translate into a decision
about the software.
Mental models are diagrams that represent the
underlying philosophies and emotions that drive
people's behavior, matched up with the ways you
think you can support them with your software.
Rather than knowing "I like to go to movies
alone," you'll learn the myriad reasons why. (E.g.
"I like to give the director the attention and
respect he deserves, because when I wrote a play
in college, people didn't pay attention very well,
they didn't get the point, and I felt
frustrated.") Knowing the motivating philosophy
opens up different avenues for supporting the
behavior. You could, for example, offer additional
means for this type of moviegoer to "get the
point" of the movie. Mental models are useful as
structures for attaching these ideas to sets of
philosophies and for generating new ideas in
places where there are gaps.
In this presentation, author Indi Young will
introduce you to mental models and show you one
that was developed at Google for the Analytics
product. Indi will show you how to use the mental
model to expand your perspective and create
applications that reach beyond the basic
requirements.
Speaker: Indi Young
Indi's work spans a number of decades, from the
mid-80's when the desktop metaphor was replacing
command line and menu-based systems, to the
mid-90's when the Web first toddled onto the
scene, to now, when designers are intent on
crafting good experiences. After 10 years of
consulting, Indi helped found Adaptive Path with
six other partners, all hoping to spread good
design around the world, making things easier for
people everywhere. Indi's mental models have
helped both start-ups and large corporations
discover and support customer behaviors they
didn't think to explore at first. She has written
a book about the mental model method, Mental
Models - Aligning design strategy with human
behavior, published by Rosenfeld Media.
Tags : google techtalks techtalk engedu talk talks googletechtalks education |
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Affichage : 3673
Durée : 3837 s |
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