Context and Motivation: Software users describe requirements for new software and give feedback to existing software. Both are well studied in requirements engineering research. However, both are also heavily influenced by the users’ comprehension of existing software. We do not know which aspects of software users have in mind when they talk about it. While their mental model is interesting in itself, knowing this mental model could be helpful both, during requirements elicitation and validation - whenever user statements need to be understood.

Problem: There is no standard methodology to study mental models and existing mental model studies mostly focus on specific elements of a specific software.

Principal results: We have asked students to describe and draw a certain software. We coded the answers to understand the abstraction levels and the software aspects mentioned. We also analyzed differences. Our results show a strong focus on the interaction and domain level. The users’ drawings primarily represented the user interface. We found only small differences between participants with a computer science background compared to those without one.

Contribution: This paper presents initial insights on the software aspects in the mental model of users concerning existing software. It also describes our method to study this model and ideas for future studies.