The Effect of Rule Linking on Business Process Model Understanding

Abstract

In this chapter, we develop hypotheses that rule linking can improve process model understanding accuracy, time efficiency, and reduce mental effort. Then we present our experiment investigating the effect of rule linking, a specific rule integration approach which uses graphical links to connect process model symbols with rules, on process model understanding. Our objective is two-fold. First, we test if linked rules can improve a model user’s understanding of business process and rules. Second, by using eye-tracking technology in the experiment, we break down the statistics to the Process Model Area, Rule Area and Question Area and see what kind of information (process model, or rules) contributes most to our hypotheses. Third, we investigate the differences between other aspects of human cognitive behaviour such as single visit time and attention switching between groups, further exploring whether linked rules can improve process model understanding.