Mental Models
A mental model diagram is a fishbone or horizon diagram where the top towers represent individuals’ motivations, emotions, and stories related to their experience in achieving a particular goal, regardless of the tools they use.

Mental Models

by JAKOB NIELSEN

Summary: What users believe they know about a UI strongly impacts how they use it. Mismatched mental models are common, especially with designs that try something new.

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/mental-models/

The Secret to Designing an Intuitive UX : Match the Mental Model to the Conceptual Model

UXMAG.COM

Summary: Psychological concepts underlying good user experience and usability.

https://uxmag.com/articles/the-secret-to-designing-an-intuitive-user-experience

Half of UX is 90% Mental

abovethefolddesign.com

Summary: To put it simply, a mental model is a person’s intuition of how something works based on past experiences, knowledge, or common sense.

http://blog.abovethefolddesign.com/2011/10/11/half-of-ux-is-90-mental/

Mental Model Diagrams (Cartoon)

By Indi Young and Brad Colbow

Summary: We tend to carefully create our HTML and CSS, and meticulously place every pixel to our designs. We plan exactly where our content should be placed on a particular site. Among many other decisions we need to make, we always keep in mind to craft a great experience for all our users. But how do we know what our users really want?

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2012/04/mental-model-diagrams-cartoon/