Assessing Process Attribute Visualization and Interaction Approaches Based on a Controlled Experiment

Abstract

Ensuring the smooth and efficient execution of business processes requires a continuous process quality assessment and optimization. Process optimization exploits process attributes and their values, e.g. cost or duration of a process task, in order to derive, for example, control flow adaptations. The complexity of the analysis can range from a few to a plethora of attributes, e.g. machining times and sensor parameters in the manufacturing domain. Hence, it is crucial to support single and multiple users (e.g. process analysts) in visually exploring process attributes and their values. Specifically, comparing and assessing different visualization and interaction approaches with respect to their efficiency is required in order to offer the most suitable approach to users for a specific analysis task. However, such assessments are currently missing. To close this gap, this paper assesses three visualization and interaction approaches, i.e. 2D, 3D, and 3D with virtual reality (VR) support, based on a controlled experiment. We choose the process modeling standard Business Process Modeling and Notation (BPMN) as 2D approach. 3DViz is introduced as 3D approach with focus on attribute representation, and additionally augmented with VR. A statistically significant difference between the approaches can be observed with respect to their efficiency.