Of Mental Models and Affordances.
“And God said; let us make man in our own image, after our own likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth” A mental model is basically an explanation, unfolding or disclosure of someone’s thought(s) about how something is supposed to work in the real world [Thanks Google]. Your mental model of a door is a room or building’s entry or exit point with some form of handle attached. What happens when you get to a door you wish to enter through or exit from and there’s no handle or device or sign on how to activate it? Like a fortune teller, I can say with quite a level of certainty that you’d be stupefied, confused or maybe even frustrated; that is of course after you’ve tried to figure out what the heck is going on with the strange door. You see, your mental model does not tally with the existing and prevailing affordances. Affordances are