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Ensuring the smooth and efficient execution of business processes requires a continuous process quality assessment and optimization. Process optimization exploits process attributes and their values, e.g. cost or duration of a process task, in order to derive, for example, control flow adaptations. The complexity of the analysis can range from a few to a plethora of attributes, e.g. machining times and sensor parameters in the manufacturing domain. Hence, it is crucial to support single and multiple users (e.g. process analysts) in visually exploring process attributes and their values. Specifically, comparing and assessing different visualization and interaction approaches with respect to their efficiency is required in order to offer the most suitable approach to users for a specific analysis task. However, such assessments are currently missing. To close this gap, this paper assesses three visualization and interaction approaches, i.e. 2D, 3D, and 3D with virtual reality (VR) support, based on a controlled experiment. We choose the process modeling standard Business Process Modeling and Notation (BPMN) as 2D approach. 3DViz is introduced as 3D approach with focus on attribute representation, and additionally augmented with VR. A statistically significant difference between the approaches can be observed with respect to their efficiency.

Business process compliance refers to the formalization, enactment, verification, and monitoring of constraints for one or multiple process models and one or multiple process instances. Such complex compliance scenarios crave for visualization support that fosters traceability and understandability during design and runtime. It must be clear, for example, which processes and process instances are subject to which compliance constraint and, especially during runtime, which compliance state (e.g., satisfied or violated) is active. This paper analyzes existing visualization approaches for compliance-related information and demonstrates their usability and feasibility through a prototypical implementation and the application to a logistics scenario. The focus is on constraints that span across multiple processes and process instances. The preferred visualizations are then implemented in a real-world process scenario from the manufacturing domain and evaluated through in-depth interviews with three stakeholders. The interviews narrow down the results of the technical evaluation, indicating that Color is best suited for obtaining a quick overview and Text for in-detail analysis of compliance states.