A core aspect of diagrammatic process modeling is the visualization of the logical and temporal order in which tasks are to be performed in a process. While conventions and guidelines exist that promote modeling processes from left-to-right or from top-to-bottom, no empirically validated design rationale can be provided for this choice so far. Therefore, this paper seeks to determine whether some flow directions are better than others from a cognitive point of view. We present the results of a controlled pilot experiment comparing the effects of four flow directions (left-to-right, right-to-left, top-to-bottom, bottom-to-top) on process model comprehension with a small sample size of 44 participants. Although there is a variety of theoretical arguments which support the use of a left-to-right flow direction as convention for process models, the preliminary empirical results of the pilot experiment were less clear-cut and showed that model readers also adapted well to uncommon reading directions.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VIENNA/oai:epub.wu-wien.ac.at:5994 |
| Date | 09 1900 |
| Creators | Figl, Kathrin, Strembeck, Mark |
| Publisher | Gesellschaft fĂĽr Informatik e.V. |
| Source Sets | Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book Section, NonPeerReviewed |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Relation | https://dl.gi.de/handle/20.500.12116/2037, https://gi.de/service/publikationen/lni/, https://dl.gi.de/handle/20.500.12116/2030/, https://gi.de/, http://epub.wu.ac.at/5994/ |
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