Understanding User Mental Models Through App Sketches from Memory
Steven Schirra, Shraddhaa Narasimha, Sasha G Volkov, Justin W. Owens · CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Extended Abstracts · 2022
User-generated sketches serve as a powerful lens for understanding users’ mental models of apps and services. Inspired by research on hand-drawn maps of cities, we conducted an exploratory study in which 123 participants drew the interface of a popular mobile app from memory. An analysis of the resulting sketches highlights that these types of artifacts can be used to understand which elements are most central to users’ understanding of the app's core features and architecture—including non-existent features from other apps and services. We discuss how this work can be applied to the design of mobile apps and describe areas of future research.