The conceptual model is the mental image people create in their minds after looking at something. In interface design, it refers to the model that users think of how an interface is supposed to work.
The conceptual model must be intuitive and should match the tasks supported by the interface. This way, users can more accurately predict the working of the interface, and make their performance more efficient.
The conceptual model design provides a consistent interface framework. It keeps the users' conceptual model in mind. The detailed interface design is then based on this framework.
The conceptual model design caters to high-level details of an interface only. Therefore, it doesn’t include details such as the content and layout of the interface. In this way, the complexity of the interface is reduced, which significantly helps in detailed interface design.
The UI designer comes up with the conceptual model design by following a step-by-step procedure, which is explained below:
The first step is to decide whether the application under design is product-oriented or process-oriented. Product-oriented applications have a clear work product that can be created and saved. An example of a product-oriented application is MS Word, whose product is a Word document. On the other hand, process-oriented applications support some work processes, such as a file management system.
Next, the designer has to identify the application's major work products or processes, depending on the type of application. In a product-oriented application,
After the products or processes have been identified, the UI designer has to decide how they will be presented in the interface. For example, let's consider a product-oriented word processing application with a text document as the primary product. In this step, decisions regarding the presentation of the documents throughout the interface will be made. These decisions include modeling how a saved document will look on the computer and how the document will look when opened, among others.
Standards for all the significant windows are sketched and named. For example, the landing page window of the word processing application and the new document window will be designed with a high level of detail. This means that only the essential elements will be specified, and the windows will not be filled with any content in the conceptual model design. The behavioral properties of windows, such as movability or scalability, are also specified in this step.
Navigational pathways are a vital part of the conceptual model design. All the paths the users can navigate are decided and named in this step. The types of navigational conventions used will also be specified. For example, some paths of the top navigation bar of a word processing application can be sketched as shown below:
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