The Repercussions of Business Process Modeling Notations on Mental Load and Mental Effort

Zimoch, Michael and Pryss, Rüdiger and Probst, Thomas and Schlee, Winfried and Reichert, Manfred (2018) The Repercussions of Business Process Modeling Notations on Mental Load and Mental Effort. In: Int Workshop Series on Social and Human Aspects of Business Process Management, BPM 2018 Workshops, September 2018, Sydney, Australia.

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Abstract

Over the last decade, plenty business process modeling notations emerged for the documentation of business processes in enterprises. During the learning of a modeling notation, an individual is confronted with a cognitive load that has an impact on the comprehension of a notation with its underlying formalisms and concepts. To address the cognitive load, this paper presents the results from an exploratory study, in which a sample of 94 participants, divided into novices, intermediates, and experts, needed to assess process models expressed in terms of eight different process modeling notations, i.e., BPMN 2.0, Declarative Process Modeling, eGantt Charts, EPCs, Flow Charts, IDEF3, Petri Nets, and UML Activity Diagrams. The study focus was set on the subjective comprehensibility and accessibility of process models reflecting participant's cognitive load (i.e., mental load and mental effort). Based on the cognitive load, a factor reflecting the mental difficulty for comprehending process models in different modeling notations was derived. The results indicate that established modeling notations from industry (e.g., BPMN) should be the first choice for enterprises when striving for process management. Moreover, study insights may be used to determine which modeling notations should be taught for an introduction in process modeling or which notation is useful to teach and train process modelers or analysts.
\keywords{Business Process Modeling Notations, Cognitive Load, Mental Load, Mental Effort, Human-centered Design

Item Type: Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Subjects: DBIS Research > Publications
Divisions: Faculty of Engineering, Electronics and Computer Science > Institute of Databases and Informations Systems > DBIS Research and Teaching > DBIS Research > Publications
Depositing User: Herr Michael Winter
Date Deposited: 31 Aug 2018 15:15
Last Modified: 12 Mar 2020 23:01
URI: http://dbis.eprints.uni-ulm.de/id/eprint/1655

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