One user testing question can help uncover the gap between conceptual and mental models
Intro to B2B design: How to educate users about difficult or complex concepts
It’s possible to design things that test well but don’t teach users what they need to know.
It’s a scenario that some of you may have encountered while user testing onboarding. People can get through the onboarding process but don’t understand the introduced core concepts or functions, leading to problems later.
You might have even done this yourself: you rush through onboarding, completing things quickly, only to run into issues later (and Google the solution).
This is not a problem with simple applications. However, this became a serious issue when I started to design more complex Business-to-Business (B2B) applications for one key reason: Google searches often don’t return relevant results for their issues.
So, if your users don’t understand more complex terms and concepts, they’ll guess or stop using your product.
How exactly should you design to help educate your users about specific concepts?
The first step is to address the big elephant in the room: is this even a Designer’s job?
Why educating users is a Designer’s responsibility
However, it may only sometimes be your responsibility at larger organizations. You may have a content or writing team in your organization, which often focuses on problems like these. In that case, should it still be the responsibility of the Designer to contribute in some way?
The answer is yes, for two reasons. The first is that whatever decisions are made around content, they still have to be implemented in the design. I’ve encountered countless issues when content is finally decided on and plugged into the design: between text wrapping, odd spacing, and more, you must help your content team understand how much space they have to work with.
For example, will the content have to fit into a tooltip? Context-sensitive help? A drawer? These are design decisions that depend on being involved in content.
The other reason is that if the content is poorly implemented, it reflects most badly on the Designer. While it may not be entirely your job to explain each concept, if it appears as a poorly formatted paragraph (or otherwise visually unappealing), it reflects poorly on you.
So, how can you introduce core concepts, especially during onboarding, to help educate users? By thinking about Conceptual and Mental models.
Educate users with Conceptual and Mental Models
You might have heard about mental and conceptual models during your Design education, and it’s a critical part of learning to educate users. This is because where users struggle most isn’t understanding one specific term; it’s how different terms or concepts relate.
To give a quick overview, Mental Models are how users use previous experiences and knowledge to figure out how to use something. For example, many users can figure out how to use Amazon.in, even if they don’t understand Hindi, because of their existing mental model around using Amazon in their language.
On the other hand, conceptual models are about a Designer’s vision (and understanding) of Product Requirements and concepts made into visuals. As a result, spending a little time outlining what these concepts look like can help you figure out how to educate your users.
Here’s how to do that.
Outline the concepts you’re trying to get across
The first thing you must ensure when Designing something is whether you understand the concepts yourself.
So, ask around and grasp what you need to know about certain concepts. In complex fields like Healthcare UX, you probably don’t need an in-depth understanding of every detail.
However, specific core interactions, like recommended drug interactions, can be significant for designers to convey. For example, if a patient is assigned Drug A, they may also be recommended Drug B 80% of the time for treatment.
In that case, you want to ensure these drug combinations will be easily accessible by users rather than searching for them from scratch.
Doing this allows you to create a well-designed application with a core understanding of basic concepts to ensure that everything is covered from a conceptual model point of view. However, what comes next is a core reason we do user testing: to see if the Conceptual Model and the User’s Mental Model align.
Digging deeper through user research
When trying to ensure that your users understand something, you need to user test to find these answers.
Fortunately, several user interview questions can help you probe into your user’s mental model quickly without disrupting the tasks they’re trying to complete with user testing.
The most basic, and also easiest one, is one straightforward question:
“What do you think X means/is for?”
For example, if they’re completing a task on the page right before they move on (or when you have a spare moment), ask them about either specific terminology or concepts on the page.
In one example, we provided users with an encrypted file for Step 1 and a password for decryption in Step 2 (both on the same page). Conceptually, it should have been obvious what the password was for: it was to decrypt the encrypted file.
However, the simple question of “What do you think the password is for?” pointed at our design flaw: users conceptually didn’t realize anything from Step 1 would interact with Step 2, so the password was an utterly unknown feature.
Some other helpful questions to consider may be:
“Why do you think you need to do X?”
“Is there anything on the page that would help you with (task 1/2/3)?”
Why do you think X & Y are on the same page?”
etc.
Doing a little bit of digging through your user research process can help you determine the user’s mental model, and after that, you can begin to understand the difference.
Visualize gaps in knowledge and come up with ways to solve it
If there is a big gap in knowledge between the Conceptual and Mental models, it’s something that you need to share with the rest of the team.
One of the easiest ways to do this is to visualize the difference in one manner or another. From creating journey maps to providing user quotes, showing the gap between the Conceptual and Mental models is crucial.
This may be where the content team (mostly) takes over, but if you’re wearing multiple hats, here are some ideas on addressing these knowledge gaps.
Avoid overloading users by abstracting certain concepts early on
One of the simplest things to often do is abstracting out specific concepts early to avoid overwhelming the user. This isn’t just something that applies to onboarding: this is generally a good rule of thumb.
If your 3-screen onboarding introduces 12 concepts, it will not only overwhelm users and their mental model. It’s going to introduce friction with getting them to try your product.
Instead, you can abstract or simplify some words early in the process.
For example, instead of saying, “Statins, Drug class A, and PCSK9 inhibitors are mutually exclusive options that need to be adjusted in our Class Filter options.”
Simplify sentences to one concept, such as “You can choose different categories of drugs in our Drug Class Filter options, with the ability to include or exclude certain options.”
Abstracting complex concepts until later on helps avoid information overload.
Include conceptual diagrams and illustrations.
Often, a conceptual diagram can be a helpful way of introducing a concept, especially if there may be several interactive concepts that you need to address.
Including even a simple sketch when talking about these relationships can help define these concepts in a way that makes much more sense to your users.
Include interactive or video help.
This one is a bit new, but it can often be beneficial in showing off features that may be helpful (or that users didn’t pick up on) in a non-verbal way.
Miro has been a prominent proponent of this. Every iteration of its homepage has always included a GIF that highlights program features and can help showcase everything it can do.
This approach may take additional resources, but tons of tools allow you to showcase concepts, record short videos, and more to offer help.
Educating users is often a fundamental user experience
Part of the user journey is often centered on the user’s first time completing tasks, and as a result, learning new concepts should be no different.
While it’s not always the Designer’s job to explain things conceptually, it’s a skill that designers can not only excel at: it’s a skill that often pairs well with user testing.
Understanding where users struggle with fundamental concepts and where they misunderstand things can help improve the page you’re working on and the entire application. After all, if users learn specific concepts through onboarding, they’re less likely to need detailed instructions on other pages.
So, if you’re working with concepts or terms that your user might find challenging, spend a little time to ask users about it: figuring out if your conceptual and mental models align can often be one of the most essential things you ask about.
Kai Wong is a Senior Product Designer, Data-Informed Design Author, and Top Design Writer on Medium. His new free book, The Resilient UX Professional, provides real-world advice to get your first UX job and advance your UX career.