User’s real-world expectations on digital designs
Designing Intuitive Products by Mirroring Reality
Ever tap around an app and feel completely lost?
Then you try a different app, and everything just clicks.
One reason this happens is that some digital designs don’t match what people expect. These expectations, called “mental models,” come from how we experience the physical world. When a design doesn’t fit these expectations, it feels strange and confusing.
Picture a toddler learning about the world by stacking blocks and then tumbling them down. She learns balance, cause and effect, and how objects move or don’t move. These lessons become become engrained on her mental model of how things work. Now imagine she picks up a digital device later in life. She will expect apps to follow similar rules – like items staying put unless she moves them. If a design flips this logic, she may get frustrated.
Mental models help us interpret new information based on what we already know. When you open a new email app, you assume messages won’t just multiply on their own because that doesn’t happen to letters in real life. If something weird happens – like three replies appear when you only wrote one – you question the system. This shows how mental models can make or break your user experience.
Below are two big lessons that connect our real-world experiences to digital design. They may sound simple, but they can transform your design from confusing to intuitive.
Lesson I: Consistency in Quantity & Transformation
Think about a stack of blocks. You place one, then two, and you see the stack grow. It doesn’t suddenly become four blocks unless you add them. In digital design, elements should work in a similar way. If you add or remove things in your interface, make it clear and logical.
Imagine a messaging app. You send one message, but two appear. That mismatch feels odd because we expect a one-to-one relationship – one action leads to one result. Or picture a cloud storage service: if you upload two files, you don’t expect it to become one. This confusion can break trust in your product.
When you must change how many elements appear, be sure to show why. Animations can help. A small animation of a file shrinking into a folder shows the transformation. If new items appear, show how they are related. These visual cues reassure people that nothing strange happened behind the scenes.
Ask yourself:
- Are you adding or removing elements without explaining why?
- Could a quick animation help users see how many items should appear or disappear?
By respecting the simple rule that physical objects don’t multiply or vanish on their own, you keep your design consistent with how we believe the world should work.
Lesson II: Continuity in Time and Space
Think again about a block tower, this time you’ve removed a piece and it is tumbling down. You can follow the path of the block with your eyes. You see the start point, the motion, and then the end point. This continuity helps you understand what happened.
In a digital interface, users also need to see how items travel through screens or how windows appear and disappear. A popup that slides in from a related button is easier to track than a window that appears from nowhere. When it just appears in the middle of the screen, users might wonder which action triggered it.
Designers can show this path by using animations that connect the location of a button to the popup. The motion draws a line from “old place” to “new place.” This pattern copies our real-world sense of object movement. We see that the interface is doing what we asked, so there is no surprise.
Ask yourself:
- Do your transitions make sense if you follow them with your eyes?
- Is it clear what caused a window or element to appear or move?
Similar to real life, our eyes want a path to follow. If you give users a logical transition, they feel at ease moving through your interface.
Tying It All Back to the Real World
Our real world is packed with consistent rules. Blocks don’t double unless someone adds a second block. They don’t teleport from one corner of the room to another. The more our digital interfaces follow these patterns, the more “at home” users will feel. Sometimes we might push boundaries because digital devices allow for new possibilities. But if we break too many real-world rules, people may become confused or even stop using the product. Designers can use mental models to find the right balance between the familiar and the innovative.
These two principles – keeping quantity logical and transitions traceable – flow naturally from our physical lives into digital spaces. Much like a toddler expects her blocks to behave in a stable way, users have deep-rooted expectations for how apps should work. Honor these expectations, and you create interfaces that feel easy to learn and fun to use.
By blending real-world thinking with smart design, we can build experiences that respect what people already understand. When in doubt, remember how the physical world works. Then decide if your digital design should mirror that reality or offer a playful twist. Aim for a design that supports users’ mental models, and you’ll help them feel confident and in control from the first tap.
Mental models help us interpret new information based on what we already know. When you open a new email app, you assume messages won’t just multiply on their own because that doesn’t happen to letters in real life. If something weird happens – like three replies appear when you only wrote one – you question the system. This shows how mental models can make or break your user experience.
Cheers to creating designs that feel just right!
