”It’s a bunch of shapes connected by lines”: Evaluating the Graphical Notation System of Business Process Modeling Languages

Modern working systems require a high amount of knowledge, communication and cooperation be-tween staff members and organizational units. In order to capture, analyze and communicate internal knowledge, process-modeling methods (PMM) are applied, which visualize processes in diagrams by using a specific graphical notation. An empirical usability analysis of the graphical notation system of the C3 process-modeling method was conducted. First, in a naming task (n = 35), participants had to find the most adequate term for presented notation elements of the C3-method. Second, the sign pro-duction method was applied (n = 30), investigating users ’ prototypic pictorial representation of central concepts of the C3-method. The findings concordantly show that specific notation elements need to be revised. Moreover, the design of graphical notation systems of PMM should be harmonized with pro-totypic representations of and differing levels of expertise of PMM-users