Austin Frink Blog #5

What is the user’s mental model with respect to an object's personality and surrounding interactions?

The user's mental model of an object is essentially the user's intuitive descriptive understanding of and relationship to an object's personality and interactions. The user may not truly understand the nuts and bolts of the software, but they may be extremely skilled at using the software. A good example would be the pallete feature in Photoshop. You select a color from a vibrant transitioning gradient of all the colors of the rainbow, but what is actually happening is RGB values between 0-255 are being altered to add or subtract from the red,green, and blue color values (or hex values, or HSB).

How might this mental model contrast with the implementation model of the programmers?

As in the above, the color pallete of Photoshop is an easy intuitive color selection system for artists and users, but it is far from what is actually going on digitally deep inside the computer. Ones and zeros, trues and falses are all that exist when at the bottom of what makes these apps tick.