What's a mental model? Those in the field of cognitive research have been describing and defining mental models for a few decades. The term 'mental model' has come to mean 'a mental representation'. The mental models described in this book are representations of people's behavior, philosophies, and emotion around how they accomplish something, regardless of which tools they use. The bottom half of each diagram shows features of your product aligned with the approaches people follow. The result is a diagram that will help you:

• Better understand the user experience before making design and strategic decisions.
• Provide your organization with a clear roadmap of where it should invest its energies—and where it shouldn't.
• Be confident about your design decisions by grounding them in research data.
• Make your limited budget and time go further.
• Derive an information architecture from users' tasks that will last 10 years.
• Get everyone—from discordant team members to busy executives—on the same page with respect to design and strategy.