Analyzing Usability Of Smart Kitchen Appliances Interface Based On The User Mental Model

Smart kitchen appliance has been more and more attention from consumers and manufacturers and has broad market prospects, with the multi-function and personalized features to the fast pace of modern people to create easy and convenient kitchen work environment. However, there are serious usability problems on the interface of smart kitchen appliance on the market, because of complex function and not value for design, which seriously affect the user’s operating experience and the further development of smart kitchen appliance.This study put forward the new train of thought to the interface usability study of smart kitchen appliances combine with the mental model theory, and take the smart rice cookers’interface as a case study to gain and inductive users’usability evaluation elements through the ladder interview and mean-end chain analysis, and draw the graphics according to the relevance, present users’mental models of the smart rice cookers’ interface intuitively. The model covers the root cause of the usability problem and its impact with the key elements and their mutual relationships about the interface design. It could provide the design basis and theory reference for the design research and development in the interface of innovation and improvement stage. The study derives the design suggestions based on users’mental model map to improve usability of smart cookers’interface, and performance by contrast experiment to verify the actual application value of the mental model in the research and development phase of interface usability design.By means-end chain analyzing method, this study put forward the new train of thought to explore the visual rendering of the users’mental model and their inner link with interface usability design of smart kitchen appliances’interface usability design, and have a certain practical application value.