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

Process models are crucial artifacts in many domains and, hence, their proper comprehension is of importance. Process models mediate a plethora of aspects that are needed to be comprehended correctly. Especially novices face difficulties in the comprehension of process models, since a correct comprehension of such models requires process modeling expertise and visual observation capabilities to interpret these models correctly. Research from other domains demonstrated that visual observation capabilities of experts can be conveyed to novices. In order to evaluate the latter in the context of process model comprehension, this paper presents the results from ongoing research, in which gaze data from experts are used as Eye Movement Modeling
Examples (EMMEs) to convey visual observation capabilities to novices. Compared to prior results, the application of EMMEs improves process model comprehension significantly for novices. Novices achieved in some cases similar performance in process model comprehension as experts. Study insights highlight the positive effect of EMMEs to foster the comprehension of process models.