The Project Begins

Welcome to the first installment of Mental Space Invaders. This will be the riveting tale of Pima County Public Library's quest to create a Mental Model! "A what?" you may be asking yourself.  That is what I was wondering too when I was asked to lead this project. A mental model, very basically, is the way someone thinks about how something works. However, very specifically, PCPL is creating a Mental Model as developed by Indi Young from Adaptive Path. This is a method of discovering the reasons why users do things and the way in which an organization supports them in accomplishing those things.
My first step on this quest was reading Mental Models Aligning Design Strategy with Human Behavior by Indi Young. This book has become my near constant companion (if only it would do its fair share of the dishes) and I feel like I am starting to get a handle on the process. The Mental Models blog on the Rosenfeld Media site has also been extremely helpful. I am pretty excited about the possibilities this process has for giving us the opportunity to really understand our users. I keep thinking about this as a reality check for us, a way to find out what people are actually doing instead of guessing at what we think they want or even designing programs based on what they tell us they want. What they actually do might be different than either of those things or it might not, but we will find out!

So on to the first step - assembling a crack team of mental model builders!