The influence of matching degree of the user’s inherent mental model and the product’s embedded mental model on the mobile user experience

Abstract

A good user experience requires that the feedback generated by gestures is consistent with a user’s existing cognitive habits and his learnt Mental Model. However, it remains unclear that to what extent and in what ways the consistency between a user’s inherent Mental Model(UIMM) and a product’s embedded Mental Model (PEMM) can affect a user’s operating experience. This paper, by making two experiments, has explored the extent and the way in which the consistency between PEMM and UIMM influences the user experience. The results manifest that: (1) there is a high correlation between the two Mental Models’ matching degree and the user experience. When the consistency, the matching degree between the two Mental Models, is high, a user’s perception about the product’s usability is also high; on the contrary, the user will feel a low product usability and a low user experience; (2) there is a significant correlation between the two Mental Models’ matching degree and the task type. It is the tasks of “browsing news” and “adding comments”, especially the former, that have a higher matching degree between UIMM and PEMM, and there is a lower one in the tasks of “viewing the detailed information”, “viewing the comments” and “sharing the news”. It shows that there is a bigger difference between users and designers in these three tasks.