Session 7
16.10.2020
This session focuses on people and the need to understand what they understand. Let’s shed some light on two terms that help us as designers to achieve this:
Models and Metaphors.
How do you think a bill is passed in your country? different people will make different sketches of what they think happens in the process of making a law. An image of something — a process — in your head is different for every person.
This is a mental model; A model of reality that people make from their experiences or knowledge of the world.
Technology that we use every day also involves a mental model. You figure out how it’ll work because of an established mental model. If it doesn’t work and you see that the old mental model isn’t working, you then decide to read the instruction manual. Mental model in this case is for users. Businesses usually don’t change mental models because they’ve figured out what sells through a certain model that they’ve adapted.
So what is a Conceptual model? That is a model that might not exist in user yet but it’s what the designer makes and wants users to adopt.
New models can be derived by asking “what if?”
George Lakoff who is a cognitive linguist, says our thoughts are arranged in “metaphors”. We build concepts from what we see around us in nature and in the world.
Gareth Morgan, a research professor, also writes about occupational metaphors in his book, “Images of Organization”. He highlights how systems and institutions also run on metaphors (machines, brains, culture, organism) which basically involve words you use in a certain occupation that you wouldn’t use in other places. It shows what the organization values by the usage of metaphors and language.
With the understanding of mental models and metaphors, we can observe how advertisement uses metaphors to promote a certain state of mind, state of living, luxury, security, and many other things.
