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Comparison of Cluster Analysis and Structural Analysis Methods for Identifying User Mental Models: An Integrated in-Vehicle Telematics Systems Illustration

A methodology for capturing the complexity of user mental model representations of complex systems is described in this report, with an illustrative application to an integrated telematics system for use in passenger vehicles. Thirty-two “tech-savvy” and “average-user” participants completed a card-sorting task based on the functional and information elements of an integrated telematics system under development. The data were comparatively analyzed using cluster and structural analyses. While both types of analyses generally identified the same mental model categories, only the structural analysis provided information about “distributed” functions that occurred in more than one category of the user's mental representation. This led to a more detailed and interconnected implementation of the telematics system. Usability evaluations of the structural-analysis-based design provided support of its effectiveness in capturing the mental representations of the telematic system held by both “tech-savvy” and “averageuser” participants.