Wednesday, 25 March 2009

UCM or UMM? Let IxDA decide?

I have been heavily reading into cognitive science and 'mental models' (see PhD Project 01 blog) with the help and advice of the members of the Interaction Design Association. I have now made 3 posts to their discussion lists and have made contact with Alan Cooper, the writer of About Face 3. My latest post I duplicate here as you need to be a member to be in the discussion.

I have just placed this into the cue for circulation so hopefully I will get some responses and therefore will eventually add these here. I post this message here to solicit a wider response, so please if you can advise post a comment to this blog.

Original post:
"Following on from my previous posts I am researching into what Don Norman calls 'designer's models' and Alan Cooper calls 'represented models'. In doing so I'm reading the literature on 'mental models' (Thanks to Alan Cooper, Vicky Teinaki, J. Ambrose Little, Francis Norton and Alan James Salmoni). I came across Richard Young's essay in Gentner and Steven's 'Mental Models', in which he discusses UCMs: "User's Conceptual Models".

Can anyone in the community advise whether Young's UCMs were an early incarnation of what becomes defined as 'User's Mental Models' or a separate area of research? Any comments would benefit me from maybe wasting time on a tangential research cul-de-sac.

Thanks"

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