Look ahead and see the future: The Mental Model of Time and Implications for Customized User Interfaces for Older Adults

This work identifies mental models of time and resulting considerations regarding illus-trations of time on interfaces. For this purpose, a study with 68 participants from identi-cal cultural backgrounds and different age groups was conducted with the aim to collect data about their individual mental model of time. In contrast to the current literature and common timelines used by modern technologies or social media platforms, our results reveal that not every individual has a horizontal (left-right) or vertical (bottom-up) mental model of time. Hence, current approaches do not meet the prevalent mental models of older adults. With the gathered data, we analyzed differences in perceived directions of time. In addition, we established a taxonomy for describing the different mental models of time for each subject. These results provide insights for designing more customized user interfaces by adapting the time illustration on interfaces according to the individual mental model of time.