Using Secondary Notation to Influence the Model User's Attention

Recently cognitive principles have been discussed for Conceptual Modeling with the aim to increase domain understanding, model comprehension and modeling efficiency. In particular, the principle of Perceptual Discriminability, which discusses the visual differences of modeling constructs, reveals potential for model comprehension if human attention is influenced in a way that important modeling constructs are more easily detected, and can hence faster be processed. Yet, so far no conditions how the human gaze can be influenced have been defined and evaluated for Conceptual Modeling. This dissertation extends Perceptual Discriminability for conditions to attract human attention for those constructs that are important for model comprehension. Furthermore, these conditions are applied to constructs of two different modeling grammars in general as well as to elements of the process flow of Business Process Models. To evaluate the results a laboratory experiment of extended Perceptual Discriminability is described in which significant differences have been identified for process flow comprehension. For the demonstration of the potential of extended Perceptual Discriminability BPMN secondary notation is improved by emphasizing those constructs that are most important for model comprehension. Therefore, those constructs that are important for model comprehension have been identified within a content analysis and have been worked on according to the conditions of extended Perceptual Discriminability for those visual variables that are free for an application in secondary notation.:Preface ii Abstract iii Table of contents iv Table of Figures v List of Tables vi List of Abbreviations vii Part 1 - Summary Paper 1 1. Motivation 2 2. Research design 7 2.1 Research objectives 7 2.2 Scope 9 2.3 Research method 11 3. Structure of the dissertation 13 4. Contribution to theory and practice 17 5. Future Research Ideas 19 Part 2 - Publications 20 Publication 1 21 Publication 2 22 Publication 3 23 Publication 4 24 Publication 5 25 Publication 6 26 Literature 27 Part 3 - Appendix 3