ABSTRACT
As I contemplated what to write for this chapter, I became intrigued with the idea of exploring the use and meaning of mental models in Human–Computer Interaction (HCI). HCI is a discipline with which I have been associated for over 10 years as a researcher but mostly as a practitioner concerned with building systems that will be easy for people to use. On reflection it seemed that many of these systems rely on the notion that users’ interaction is guided by some internal representation of the structure and behaviour of the system. The opportunity to write this chapter seemed an appropriate time to articulate the use and meaning of models in HCI and to explore the important, if somewhat ambitious, goal of relating these notions of models to theories of mental models in cognitive science.
