Studying Of Application Of Mental Model In Product Innovation Design

User-centered design concepts are spreading throughout the industry since the mid-1990 s.From now on,the likes and dislikes of users directly determine the product development,enterprise direction,market supply,etc.,and are the driving force for promoting consumption.However,at present,China is still in the industrial structure of “manufacturing big country”,the homogenization of market products is serious,and enterprises lack a perfect product innovation mechanism.Considering this phenomeno n,we perform researches on the user mental model.By deepening the user’s behavior and inner activities,the user mental model can help designers understand the user’s needs and make the product design closer to the user.Besides,designers can subjective ly guide the user and create unexpected experiences for the user by breaking through the user mental model,which contributes to the product innovation and the long-term development of enterprises.The remainder of this paper is organized as follows.First,we clarify the concept of mental and mental models and its theoretical research process;and discuss the mental model in product design through case analysis.We find two important significance of user mental model to product innovation design.One is to provide strategic guidance for designers and companies,and the other is to promote continuous product innovat io n.All the preliminary researches consolidate the theoretical basis for the study of the subsequent user mental model.Then,we analyze the elements and the structure of the user mental model,and propose a specific process of constructing the user mental model according to the analyzation.After that,we put forward four applicatio n strategies in the user mental model,which are the fill operation,the merge operation,the split operation,and the refactor operation.Through product design cases,we deeply analyze the specific applications and the influence of the four strategies in product innovation design.Moreover,a product innovation design process is proposed based on the research of the early user mental model.Last but not least,according to the product innovation design process of the user mental model,taking the chopping board design practice as an example,we design a subversively experiential chopping board from the experience perspective.By comparing the user experience evaluation in the traditiona l chopping board design and the proposed chopping board design,the simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method effectively enhances the user experience,thus verifying the rationality of the product innovation design process.In this paper,we investigate the user mental model from three aspects,which are the general construction methods,the specific application strategy,and the design flow.What’s more,we further expand the depth and breadth of theoretical researches on the user mental model,verifying that as a user research method,the user mental model can better promote the user experience and open a new gate for sketch in product innovat io n design.