Process Model Complexity Metrics, Cognitive Load and Visual Behavior: A Multi-granular Eye-Tracking Analysis
Journal
Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing
ISSN
1865-1348
ISSN-Digital
1865-1356
ISBN
978-3-031-95396-5
Type
journal article
Date Issued
2025-06-14
Author(s)
Abstract
Complexity metrics are widely used to estimate the difficulty of understanding process models. However, the relationship between these metrics and the concept of cognitive load, which captures the difficulty experienced by users, is not fully understood in the process modeling literature. In neighboring fields like Software Engineering, researchers could only to a limited degree establish a relationship between complexity metrics and users' cognitive load. To investigate the extent to which such a relationship exists in the process modeling field, we conduct an eye-tracking experiment that assesses how a suite of metrics, capturing both the essential complexity inherent to the process specifications and the accidental complexity emerging from the model layout, aligns with users' cognitive load during model comprehension tasks. Our findings show that the used metrics suite aligns well with users' cognitive load. Moreover, our analysis of users' behavior suggests that different levels of model complexity yield distinct visual behaviors. The implications of our work extend to both practice and research, validating a comprehensive suite of complexity metrics and delivering a multi-granular approach that can be reproduced in other experiments to enable the analysis of users' cognitive load and behavior on simple but also complex models.
Language
English (United States)
Keywords
Process models
Complexity metrics
Cognitive load
Visual behavior
Difficulty
Eye tracking
Book title
Enterprise, Business-Process and Information Systems Modeling
Publisher
Springer Nature Switzerland
Volume
558
Start page
87
End page
103
Event Title
BPMDS 2025
Event Location
Vienna, Austria
Event Date
16-17 June
Subject(s)
Contact Email Address
thierry.sorg@unisg.ch