6. Benefits of a conforming to a mental model

The benefits of conforming to the user's mental model are:

  • Makes the interface predictable
  • Easy to learn
  • Easy to use
  • Simple to guess where controls are likely to be
  • Transferable skills, so another application using the same ideas will be equally easy.

The problems with an non-conforming interface

  • Difficult to learn quickly
  • Harder for the user to guess where things are
  • Mistakes more likely

 

challenge see if you can find out one extra fact on this topic that we haven't already told you

Click on this link: Creating a predictable user interface