Today I read about mental models and its use in performing tasks. Mental models help users perform various tasks. They are a description of how processes take place in real life. These descriptions might be inaccurate, they are descriptions according to the users. For example: in user's mind, electric flow might be the similar to water flowing through sewage pipes. Designers need to make sure that their designs evoke the mental model that corresponds to a particular task, even if the model in user's mind is inaccurate.
Donald Norman’s book “ Design of Everyday Things” argues that designers should make sure that their designs instill and invoke an accurate mental model in user’s mind. This way users do not have to rote learn the process and it doesn't require a lot of mental efforts. In order to understand this better, I try to think of a process where an accurate mental model would have helped me understand and implement the process better. I tried thinking in terms of software but I ended up thinking about pasta.
So, sometimes I end up making a mushy pasta and other times it is cooked perfectly. I was not able to figure out the cause of this problem. Once I ended up making a mushy pasta for my friend. This friend of mine was observing me and later on she informed me, that my cooking technique was incorrectly. She explained that putting the uncooked pasta before the water begins boiling was the source of this inconsistency. I didn't understand, how does putting pasta before and after the water boils makes it so different?Putting in the uncooked pasta before and after, both had: water boiling and pasta added in that water steps. Later I tried putting in the uncooked pasta after the water begins to boil and it cooked perfectly. I could see it("friend's suggestion") being true but I didn't understand the reason so I had to learn it: Wait till the water boils and then add pasta to it. Although this is not a big thing to remember, still it was an extra effort.
After reading about mental models and its affects on users, I started thinking about this pasta boiling process. I related it to having a correct mental model and its affect on the amount of efforts required to perform the task. I did some research for a scientific explanation to this process. After some extensive research, I found my answer.
What I understood after my research was that cooking is about the way you want the heat to enter your food material. Example: to boiling a potato, we want the potato to be cooked completely, i.e. from inside and outside. In this case, you would put the potato in cold water and then boil both of them. This makes the entire potato receive heat simultaneously. However, if you putting the potato after water boils gets the outer cover of potato to be in contact with high temperature instantly as compared to the inner potato substance. This will make the outer cover heat up before the inner substance. As the outer cover will be in contact with high temperature for longer period of time as compared to the inner one, the outer will get cooked before the inner one. This is opposite to what we want for cooking pasta. For pasta, we want the outer covering to get heated up and solidify before the inner one. If we put the pasta in cold water and then boil the contents, then the pasta stays in water for a long period of time. Then the water enters the inner starch in pasta and gelatinize it, i.e. breaks it. This makes it mushy.
So, the information about how food substance and boiling water interacts helped me understand the inconsistencies in my cooked pasta dishes. Having a better understanding of the process helped me remember it. It is no longer an extra burden for me.
This made me realize another thing: designers need to impart only the amount of information that is required for the user to perform a task correctly. Knowledge about the gelatinizing of starch does not provide me with any extra benefit, for boiling pasta. Thus it is not required.