A model of mental model construction

  • Authors:
  • C. Lewis

  • Affiliations:
  • Department of Computer Science and Institute of Cognitive Science, Campus Box 430, University of Colorado, Boulder CO

  • Venue:
  • CHI '86 Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
  • Year:
  • 1986

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Abstract

Learning to control a computer system from limited experience with it seems to require constructing a mental model adequate to indicate the causal connections between user actions, system responses, and user goals. While many kinds of knowledge could be used in building such a model, a small number of simple, low-level heuristics is adequate to interpret some common computer interaction patterns. Designing interactions so that they fall within the scope of these heuristics may lead to easier mastery by learners.