6 - William McQuade

A user thinks of features in different ways than the programmers of those features do. The programmer is designing things that they believe would be beneficial to the user. However, each user is different in the way they use things and therefore the programmer isn't always doing what each user would prefer. The users mental model of the categorization feature on YouTube varies from user to user. Many users, that I personally know, believe that the categorization feature on YouTube is going so far. Their mental model of the categorization feature is that it can be helpful to a certain extent. Categorizing too much provides more website clutter and is unnecessary because, for the most part, users on YouTube know the particular thing they are searching for. Therefore, the user will use the search bar to search for a particular video, not the categorization feature which makes it somewhat not useful. The programmer believes that this feature can benefit the user by enabling them to search for more videos on specific topics and that is their mental model. However, to search for specific topics the user will use the search bar and provide specific key words. The programmer is thinking to deeply into the design, and therefore wasting time and cluttering the website.