Using Insights from Cognitive Neuroscience to Investigate the Effects of Event-Driven Process Chains on Process Model Comprehension

Abstract

Business process models have been adopted by enterprises for more than a decade. Especially for domain experts, the comprehension of process models constitutes a challenging task that needs to be mastered when creating or reading these models. This paper presents the results we obtained from an eye tracking experiment on process model comprehension. In detail, individuals with either no or advanced expertise in process modeling were confronted with models expressed in terms of Event-driven Process Chains (EPCs), reflecting different levels of difficulty. The first results of this experiment confirm recent findings from one of our previous experiments on the reading and comprehension of process models. On one hand, independent from their level of expertise, all individuals face similar patterns, when being confronted with process models exceeding a certain level of difficulty. On the other, it appears that process models expressed in terms of EPCs are perceived differently compared to process models specified in the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN). In the end, their generalization needs to be confirmed by additional empirical experiments. The presented experiment continues a series of experiments that aim to unravel the factors fostering the comprehension of business process models by using methods and theories stemming from the field of cognitive neuroscience and psychology.

The Road to Success: Recommendations for the Design of Successful Business Process Modeling Initiatives

“…To improve model applicability, enterprises must determine a degree of complexity, which enables them to capture details without exceeding stakeholder capabilities. Thus, they rely on easy-to-use methods and tools [27,28].…”

“…As process models can be accessed over multiple channels, employees typically analyze and apply them without additional support from experts. To support them in doing so productively, enterprises must weight syntactic and semantic quality with modeling intuitiveness [27]. In the past, enterprises were shaped by functional structures.…”

Applying Eye Movement Modeling Examples to Guide Novices’ Attention in the Comprehension of Process Models

“…The latter is identified by analyzing modeling constructs to which the eyes repeatedly jump back frequently, or to which the eyes have a longer average dwell time. Different types of eye movements (i.e., fixations and saccades) may serve as an indicator representing emerging cognitive load during process model comprehension (e.g., more fixations during high load) [ 17 ]. In addition, the authors of [ 18 ] discussed experiences and lessons learned from eye tracking studies on process model comprehension.…”

Towards the Applicability of Measuring the Electrodermal Activity in the Context of Process Model Comprehension: Feasibility Study

“…In order to benefit from the application of process models, organizations must take care that the proper understanding of such models (i.e., process model comprehension) is ensured for all involved stakeholders [6]. Therefore, the identification of factors is vital, both positive and negative ones, which influence the comprehension of process models.…”