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Cognitive Insights into Business Process Model Comprehension: Preliminary Results for Experienced and Inexperienced Individuals

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Enterprise, Business-Process and Information Systems Modeling (BPMDS 2017, EMMSAD 2017)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing ((LNBIP,volume 287))

Abstract

Process modeling constitutes a fundamental task in the context of process-aware information systems. Besides process model creation, the reading and understanding of process models is of utmost importance. To better understand the latter, we have developed a conceptual framework focusing on the comprehension of business process models. By adopting concepts from cognitive neuroscience and psychology, the paper presents initial results from a series of eye tracking experiments on process model comprehension. The results indicate that experiences with process modeling have an influence on overall model comprehension. In turn, with increasing process model complexity, individuals with either no or advanced expertise in process modeling do not significantly differ with respect to process model comprehension. The results further indicate that both groups face similar challenges in reading and comprehending process models. The conceptual framework takes these results into account and provides the basis for the further experiments.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Material downloadable from: www.dropbox.com/sh/peecwj4dyqwz9ew/AAAi4tewWOR7jJmPbz6gPsHpa?dl=0.

  2. 2.

    http://www.smivision.com/en/gaze-and-eye-tracking-systems/products/iview-x-hi-speed.html.

  3. 3.

    Sample images downloadable from: www.dropbox.com/sh/peecwj4dyqwz9ew/AAAi4tewWOR7jJmPbz6gPsHpa?dl=0.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Databases and Information Systems, Ulm University, Ulm, Germany

    Michael Zimoch, Rüdiger Pryss, Thomas Probst & Manfred Reichert

  2. Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Regensburg University, Regensburg, Germany

    Winfried Schlee

Authors
  1. Michael Zimoch
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  2. Rüdiger Pryss
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  3. Thomas Probst
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  4. Winfried Schlee
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  5. Manfred Reichert
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Michael Zimoch .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Haifa , Haifa, Israel

    Iris Reinhartz-Berger

  2. University of Duisburg-Essen , Duisburg, Germany

    Jens Gulden

  3. Université de Paris 1 Panthéon - Sorbonne, Paris, France

    Selmin Nurcan

  4. Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology, Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg

    Wided Guédria

  5. Saint Louis University , St. Louis, Missouri, USA

    Palash Bera

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Zimoch, M., Pryss, R., Probst, T., Schlee, W., Reichert, M. (2017). Cognitive Insights into Business Process Model Comprehension: Preliminary Results for Experienced and Inexperienced Individuals. In: Reinhartz-Berger, I., Gulden, J., Nurcan, S., Guédria, W., Bera, P. (eds) Enterprise, Business-Process and Information Systems Modeling. BPMDS EMMSAD 2017 2017. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 287. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59466-8_9

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