What We Do:

Company Overview

Mental Models, Inc. is a boutique design firm specializing in User Experience design of web and native applications. We offer expertise in the full Product Realization lifecycle—from building consensus among product management, engineering, customers and stakeholders—to discovering and specifying Information Architecture, Interaction Design and Visual Design—to seeing the design through to final implementation.

We are adept at gathering ideas from multiple stakeholders and unifying them into a coherent product vision that balances the pure ideals of user–centered design with the realities of deadlines, resource constraints and rapidly evolving technologies.

Mental Models at a Glance

Mental Models delivers a unique depth and breadth of User Experience Design expertise combined with practical, real–world business experience.

Please see our client list at www.mentalmodels.com/clients and examples of our work at www.mentalmodels.com/portfolio.

Methodology Overview—Product Realization

Product Realization is a multidisciplinary approach to User Experience Design that employs a highly iterative and interactive user–centric design process and brings to bear the knowledge of experts in the areas of Human Factors, Marketing, Software Engineering and Graphic Design. It is our belief that only through multiple iterations of increasing fidelity can a truly world–class solution be found. While the design space may be large, by combining rapid prototyping techniques with lessons learned through years of real–world experience, we are able to guide our clients to elegant solutions in a short timeframe.

Sitting between Marketing and Engineering within the product development lifecycle, the Product Realization approach also serves to balance the pure ideals of user–centered design methodologies with the realities of deadlines, resource constraints, rapidly evolving technologies, and divergent points of view. Developed and honed over our company’s 15 years of operation, the process encompasses three phases: Discovery, Rapid Iteration and Final Specification.

Mental Models Positioning Within the Product Development Lifecycle.

At any point in the process, the Mental Models "module" can be plugged-in between Marketing and Engineering; understanding and mediating the requirements and constraints of both groups to produce a common, unified vision.

The objectives of Discovery are to explore and organize the design space, and develop a mental model—a user–centric representation of the product, how it works and how users interact with it. This involves mastering existing products, reviewing documentation and gathering inputs on product vision/direction from various stakeholders. A Golden Thread interactive demo and document are then used to explore the design space—key usage scenarios and associated features/concepts are explored and consensus is built. The goal is not a detailed description of how functionality will be expressed, but rather a single, interactive instantiation of the product vision. The Golden Thread helps bridge the gap between the concepts of the visionaries and the details needed by Product Managers, Engineers and other stakeholders; by suspending disbelief and viewing the Golden Thread as a final product, stakeholders can visualize, discuss and ultimately develop a unified, coherent vision. We find this step to be critical in building consensus within the team and in nailing down the high–level mental model of the product.

With the mental model in place, the Information Architecture is generated. The Information Architecture maps user requirements to proposed product functionality, allows for extensibility to future releases and serves as the foundation for the solution as we move forward with the Rapid Iteration phase.

Rapid Iteration continues the iterative design process with increasing fidelity. Starting with the concepts from Discovery, functionality is added and detailed design is added and refined as we proceed towards a complete, usable, implementable and consistent solution. This phase addresses detailed interaction design (page types and interaction mechanisms), visual design⁄aesthetics (interface tone, style, and layout) and graphic design. It is typically within this phase—as more and more functionality is added and the user experience fine–tuned—that usability issues are identified and resolved. Throughout the phase, iterations are presented as interactive demos⁄prototypes and are reviewed with the client, users, investors, etc.

In the Final Specification phase, the cross–browser HTML and supporting files are developed. A UI Specification (interactive demo and document) containing detailed screen designs, UI functionality and flow through the major screens of the application is created. Wireframes with production–ready front–end HTML⁄DHTML⁄CSS⁄JavaScript⁄JSP⁄ASP⁄XML calls, etc., and final artwork and style guidelines are also provided as appropriate.

The figure below summarizes the focus and deliverables for each of the process phases.

Types of Engagements

• Application user experience design from the ground–up, recast existing apps to fit new interaction models and⁄or user interfaces
• Visual design and reskinning (creating a new look for an existing website or application)
• Virtual UI team—multidisciplinary user experience consulting
• Website design, development and implementation
• Webmaster hosting and ongoing administration/maintenance
• Graphic design—icons, logos, etc.
• Integrated marketing materials–collateral, signage, letterhead, etc. married to the look and feel of the applications we help design

Areas of Expertise

• Domains—web and native enterprise applications (experienced with complex interactions⁄workflows) and consumer applications, company websites, portals⁄information dashboards
• User experience design—Information Architecture, Interaction Design, Visual Design, Graphic Design, specification of application/website functional requirements; UI best practices (e.g., focus groups, storyboard development, rapid prototyping, heuristic review, usability testing)
• Implementation—development and commercial implementation; HTML, DHTML, .NET, JSP, ASP, PHP, JavaScript, AJAX, Perl, Flash⁄FLEX, Google Web Toolkit, Java, C++, C#
• Webmaster Hosting

Please see our client list at www.mentalmodels.com/clients and examples of our work at www.mentalmodels.com/portfolio.