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Do Declarative Process Models Help to Reduce Cognitive Biases Related to Business Rules?

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Conceptual Modeling (ER 2020)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 12400))

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Abstract

Declarative process modeling languages, such as Declare, represent processes by means of temporal rules, namely constraints. Those languages typically come endowed with a graphical notation to draw such models diagrammatically. In this paper, we explore the effects of diagrammatic representation on humans’ deductive reasoning involved in the analysis and compliance checking of declarative process models. In an experiment, we compared textual descriptions of business rules against textual descriptions that were supplemented with declarative models. Results based on a sample of 75 subjects indicate that the declarative process models did not improve but rather lowered reasoning performance. Thus, for novice users, using the graphical notation of Declare may not help readers properly understand business rules: they may confuse them in comparison to textual descriptions. A likely explanation of the negative effect of graphical declarative models on human reasoning is that readers interpret edges wrongly. This has implications for the practical use of business rules on the one hand and the design of declarative process modeling languages on the other.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria

    Kathrin Figl

  2. Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy

    Claudio Di Ciccio

  3. Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Hajo A. Reijers

Authors
  1. Kathrin Figl
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  2. Claudio Di Ciccio
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  3. Hajo A. Reijers
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kathrin Figl .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

    Gillian Dobbie

  2. University of Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany

    Ulrich Frank

  3. TU Wien, Vienna, Austria

    Gerti Kappel

  4. Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, USA

    Stephen W. Liddle

  5. University of Klagenfurt, Klagenfurt am Wörthersee, Austria

    Heinrich C. Mayr

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Figl, K., Di Ciccio, C., Reijers, H.A. (2020). Do Declarative Process Models Help to Reduce Cognitive Biases Related to Business Rules?. In: Dobbie, G., Frank, U., Kappel, G., Liddle, S.W., Mayr, H.C. (eds) Conceptual Modeling. ER 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12400. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62522-1_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62522-1_9

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