Design of a Software Tool for Mobile Application User Mental Models Collection and Visualization

Mental model is a fundamental term in human-computer interaction (HCI). The process of HCI creates different qualitative levels of user experience (UX) which can be determined by the quality of communication between a technological product (the system) and a user of this product. The level of user experience is indirectly derivable from measurement of different qualitative and quantitative aspects of the interaction (achievement of objectives, satisfaction, comfort, time required to perform the task). The user experience is the key factor which determines the popularity of web or mobile applications and software applications in general. During the HCI, the user is unconsciously comparing his mental model (own idea of functionality) with the system image (the real graphical user interface – GUI). The distance between the user’s mental model and the system image should be minimal. Creation of successful GUI requires a real user-application interaction testing and statistical evaluation of the testing data. This paper describes a design of a software tool for user mental model collection and visualization in the area of mobile applications with emphasis on context of the HCI.