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International Conference on Conceptual Modeling

ER 2012: Conceptual Modeling pp 64–77Cite as

Understanding Understandability of Conceptual Models – What Are We Actually Talking about?

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 7532))

Abstract

Investigating and improving the quality of conceptual models has gained tremendous importance in the past years. In general, model understandability is regarded one of the most important model quality goals and criteria. A considerable amount of empirical studies, especially experiments, have been conducted in order to investigate factors influencing the understandability of conceptual models. However, a thorough review and reconstruction of 42 experiments on conceptual model understandability conducted in this research shows that there is a variety of different understandings and conceptualizations of the term model understandability. As a consequence, this term remains ambiguous, research results on model understandability are hardly comparable and partly imprecise, which shows the necessity of clarification what the conceptual modeling community is actually talking about when the term model understandability is used. In order to overcome this shortcoming, our research classifies the different observed dimensions of model understandability in a reference framework. Moreover, implications of the findings are presented and discussed and some guidelines for future model understandability research are given.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Information Systems (IWi), at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), Saarland University, Campus, Building D32, 66123, Saarbrücken, Germany

    Constantin Houy, Peter Fettke & Peter Loos

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  1. Constantin Houy
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  2. Peter Fettke
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  3. Peter Loos
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di informatica e Automazione, Università Roma Tre, Via Vasca Navale, 79, 00145, Roma, Italy

    Paolo Atzeni

  2. Department of Computer Science, University of Hong Kong, Pok Fu Lam Road, Hong Kong, China

    David Cheung

  3. Eller College of Management, University of Arizona, McClelland Hall, Room 108, P.O. Box 210108, 85721-0108, Tucson, AZ, USA

    Sudha Ram

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Houy, C., Fettke, P., Loos, P. (2012). Understanding Understandability of Conceptual Models – What Are We Actually Talking about?. In: Atzeni, P., Cheung, D., Ram, S. (eds) Conceptual Modeling. ER 2012. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7532. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-34002-4_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-34002-4_5

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