Bureaucrats, emailconfirmed
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The way real world things work is represented in our mind as a so-called mental model. The whole world with all its properties can't get in our mind. It would be too much data and what we percieve is heavily filtered anyway by our senses. | The way real world things work is represented in our mind as a so-called mental model. The whole world with all its properties can't get in our mind. It would be too much data and what we percieve is heavily filtered anyway by our senses. | ||
A "good" mental model maintains - despite of the reduction of the real thing - the things that are relevant for the way we deal with the thing the mental model represents. | A "good" mental model maintains - despite of the reduction of the real thing - the things that are relevant for the way we deal with the thing the mental model represents. | ||
[[ | [[File:Honeywell_round_thermostat.jpg|300px|thumb|thermostat]] | ||
[[File:Warmwasserheizung.jpg|300px|thumb|This works like you think]] | [[File:Warmwasserheizung.jpg|300px|thumb|This works like you think]] | ||
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The mental model breaks if you want to use a thermostad to seed up the heating process. This often causes burned food as an oven has a thermostat too. So if you are hungry and want to get the pizza fast and you think "I just turn the knob a lot"... well, it does nothing except turning your food into a black-charcoal like whatsoever. | The mental model breaks if you want to use a thermostad to seed up the heating process. This often causes burned food as an oven has a thermostat too. So if you are hungry and want to get the pizza fast and you think "I just turn the knob a lot"... well, it does nothing except turning your food into a black-charcoal like whatsoever. | ||
If you are the engineer who build these systems it is totally clear for you how they work. As well it will be often the case that your mental model is differs from the one the users have. This itself is nothing to worry about and it happens all the time. But even if you are very clever you just can spot the poblems that it can cause if you test your ideas with your users and see if they act like you intended. | If you are the engineer who build these systems it is totally clear for you how they work. As well it will be often the case that your mental model is differs from the one the users have. This itself is nothing to worry about and it happens all the time. But even if you are very clever you just can spot the poblems that it can cause if you test your ideas with your users and see if they act like you intended. | ||
=Basic Principles& Best Practices= | =Basic Principles& Best Practices= | ||