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Terry
Simpson of connect-systems.com
wrote:
You
say that the book asserts that "User's don't form Mental Models
of Sites" and say that is strange. Indeed, I agree that it is strange.
I have not read the book so I can't speak for how they came to this
conclusion. But it sounds like an exercise in undergraduate psychology.
If they failed to find a mental model in their users, it is not
sufficient to conclude that users did not try to form a mental model.
Many of us have experienced the temptation to believe that our car
keys do not exist because we can't find them, but in reality, we
have simply not investigated properly.
You
also mention 'building the user's trust' which is an important point.
This could also be put in terms of modelling. Users have build mental
models through a series of interactions. The model starts off being
very fragile and becomes increasingly robust as the user tests their
model and succeeds. With the early fragile model and a minor failure
(e.g. clicking on an underline does not result in a new page because
it merely an underlined font), the user is not too disturbed, but
it might delay the process of model building. This is why during
training, we start with very simple tasks that give early rewards,
and avoid tasks that can result in major failure. With a later more
robust model, minor failures are acceptable because the model can
be adjusted without having to be entirely rebuilt. However a major
failure can be rather more disturbing. For example the user clicks
on a link and something happens but they do not see a complete page
during their tolerance time threshold, but the process cannot be
reversed using the 'Back' key. The user now has to learn that web
site programmers are able to do this to them, the browser window
is not only under their control, and the 'Back' key is not as reliable
a control as they may have thought.
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