Graphical Modeling VS. Textual Modeling: An Experimental Comparison Based on iStar Models

Liu, Wenxing; Wang, Yunduo; Zhou, Qixiang; Li, Tong

doi:10.1109/compsac51774.2021.00117

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…Researchers have been long discussing whether textual or graphical model representations are better [19,23,26,34,46,48,54]. Many empirical studies comparing graphical versus textual representations have been carried out in the past concerning, e.g., COBOL data structure documentation [38], requirement models [40,57], UML model maintenance [34,46], or declarative [24] and imperative [6] business process models. Sharafi et al [57] performed an eye-tracking experiment with 28 participants to study their efficiency and accuracy with requirement comprehension tasks.…”

Section: Empirical Studies Comparing Graphical Versus Textual Represe...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While no impact on accuracy was observed, the subjects were significantly slower when working with the TROPOS graphical representation. In the same domain of requirement modeling and analysis, a recent controlled experiment with 38 student participants compared the textual and graphical versions of iStar [40] focusing on modeling tasks, with no significant differences on the resulting model size and accuracy when using the versions of iStar. However, it was found that "participants prefer to model graphically."…”

Section: Empirical Studies Comparing Graphical Versus Textual Represe...mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Live process modeling with the BPMN Sketch Miner

2022

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BPMN Sketch Miner is a modeling environment for generating visual business process models starting from constrained natural language textual input. Its purpose is to support business process modelers who need to rapidly sketch visual BPMN models during interviews and design workshops, where participants should not only provide input but also give feedback on whether the sketched visual model represents accurately what has been described during the discussion. In this article, we present a detailed description of the BPMN Sketch Miner design decisions and list the different control flow patterns supported by the current version of its textual DSL. We also summarize the user study and survey results originally published in MODELS 2020 concerning the tool usability and learnability and present a new performance evaluation regarding the visual model generation pipeline under actual usage conditions. The goal is to determine whether it can support a rapid model editing cycle, with live synchronization between the textual description and the visual model. This study is based on a benchmark including a large number of models (1350 models) exported by users of the tool during the year 2020. The main results indicate that the performance is sufficient for a smooth live modeling user experience and that the end-to-end execution time of the text-to-model-to-visual pipeline grows linearly with the model size, up to the largest models (with 195 lines of textual description) found in the benchmark workload.

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