Mental Models didn’t help me learn what I wanted to about mental models

Indi Young’s book wasn’t what I expected it to be about.

Why I read this book

Long story short: I read the book because it’s been on my to-do list for a long time to learn more about mental models.

Long story long: I first heard the term mental model in 2018 from Sarah Winters, author of Content Design.

Sarah had presented at ContentEd in London, which I attended. I connected with her on LinkedIn afterwards and asked her a question I had been mulling over about content design.

Sarah’s reply mentioned the term mental models. I had never heard the term before that point and replied that it was something I should dig into further.

Nearly two years went by, and I didn’t dig into it further at all. Then at the start of the first lockdown in 2020, I told myself I was going to use the time to read some work-related books.

I saw the book Mental Models on our office bookshelf and took it home to finally dig into the topic. And then I didn’t.

Finally, in 2023, I decided it was time to read it and have now realized this was not the book I needed to learn about mental models.

Why this post

The book Mental Models was a lot different from what I expected, so this post recaps what I wanted to read about versus what the book ended up being about.

What I wanted to read about

While I mentioned not reading on the topic until now, I had continued to come across the term in the 5 years since hearing it and had briefly searched online to gain an initial understanding of it.

Based on my research, I had come to understand mental models as being how someone perceives something to work based on prior experiences.

So I was hoping the book would cover the types of mental models people can have, why they have them, and how you can design to accommodate or help shift them.

What the book was actually about

The book read like a very practical how-to guide for a specific method of UX research.

Much of the book was dedicated to conducting the research, which covered old ground for me. So in that sense, I don’t feel like I gained much from the book.

The mental model aspect had to do with the diagrams Indi describes as the outputs of the research work.

The diagrams are essentially affinity maps of behaviors made into a tower shape. Underneath each tower, you can list the content or products you have that meet the behaviors mentioned in the tower.

If there is nothing (or not much) listed under the towers, this shows you where there are gaps you can fill with content or products to add value to those particular groups.

In the book’s defence, had I actually read the back cover, I might have realised what I wanted to learn was not what this book provided.

But I figured a design book called Mental Models would be about what everyone else referred to when they say mental models.

Making sure I wasn’t the only one with unmet expectations

There was a part of me that wondered if maybe I wasn’t understanding the book correctly, or maybe I had the wrong idea of mental models to begin with.

So I went to check out book reviews, and sure enough, other people had commented with similar thoughts to mine:

• Read Dave’s review on Goodreads about how the book was about a methodology for user research
• Read Jordan’s review on Goodreads on the difference between mental models and the book’s mental model diagrams

I actually think these two reviews are at odds describing what the book is about.

But I also see how that could happen as the depiction of mental model diagrams at the start of the book looks more like a journey map, compared with those at the end which are like vertical affinity maps.

Any good books or articles on mental models?

Mental Models the book didn’t give me the learning I was looking for, so I’m curious if anyone has any suggestions for books or articles I should read on the topic.

Content and greater UX community members who read this: anything you’d recommend?

10 books in 2023

This is my fourth book recap as part of my 2023 goal to read 10 books this year.

Read my post on why I set this reading goal

Previous posts:

• 6 things I learned reading The 1619 Project
• 4 reflections after reading The Connected Campus
• 5 quotes I want to remember from Mating in Captivity

Next book

I’m switching to a memoir. I’m reading Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey.