Nathan Potts's Blog Post #5

The user's mental model with an a object can influence how the user perceives its personality and interacts with object in many ways. Take for instance a child and a stove. A child's mental model of a stove may be incomplete, and when he or she fails to understand how a stove heats a pot of water, the child places his or her hand on the burner he or she quickly realizes that the stove is hot and heats the pot. However, if the child puts his or her hand on the stove while it's cold. He or she will think nothing of it and may think that it heats a pot via magic or something else. These two interactions are just two simple examples on how a user's mental model can be differ from the interactions of that piece of technology.

Taking my previous example, a designer of a stove may be focused too hard on what is the most efficient way to heat a pot of water to boiling and may forget that children may try to grab at the stove, thus forgetting to put indicators that the stove is on. This causes a problem with a child's realization that a stove gets hot and burns if it is touched.