Conceptual Models as Stories

What are conceptual models? I think the easiest way to connive of them is as stories, stories in context. A model is a story that puts the operation of the system into context: it weaves together all of the essential components, providing a framework, a context, and reasons for understanding. Without this story, without this conceptualization, the operation of something becomes a set of memorized actions, but without reason or purpose except "this is how it is done." Although we do operate many of the devices in our lives as learned operations, if there is any complexity to the device at all, then those operations are difficult to learn and prone to error.

Communication & Context: Design as storytelling
The story provides the context that makes the roles of the various accoutrements cleas and distinct. Without the story, without the xontext, their purpose might not be discovered.


For people to use a product succesfully, they must have the same mental model (the users model) as that of the designer (the designers model). But the designer only talks to the user via the product itself. So the entire communication must take place through the system model.
(Norman & Draper's User Centered Design System Design (1986)

De Souza: We need to provide reason to users, not methods (like userguides). This way the user fill find the task of uncovering the conceptual model much easier.

Human beings are explanation machines. We are always trying to understand the world around us, and we make up stories to explain the occurences we experience.

People are spacial. We remember where things are in space.

Reference:
http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/design_as_communicat.html
Rheinfrank, J., & Evenson, S. (1996). Design Languages. In T. Winograd (Ed.), Bringing design to software (pp. 63-80). New York: Addison-Wesley (ACM Press).

de Souza, C. S. (2005. The Semiotic Engineering of Human Computer Interaction. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.