Date of Award

2012

Document Type

Doctoral Thesis

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Department

Computing

First Advisor

Dr. John Creagh

Second Advisor

Prof. Dr. Michael Rebstock

Abstract

Over the last two decades more and more companies started to recognize the importance of graphical modeling as a way to meet their business goals. In order to describe a business case such as a business process or an application system, information in various different formats has to be integrated within a graphical model. Graphical models are developed using modeling languages such as the Unified Modeling Language (UML) and Event Driven Process Chains (EPC). The usability of graphical modeling languages has not been explicitly considered in past research. Most usability evaluation surveys are mainly focusing on applications, websites, software and technical i:)roducts. Usability has not been focused on within the development of current graphical languages for conceptual modeling. Consequently, the impact of graphical modeling languages on users as well as the output resulting from their application is not clear. This thesis focuses on an empirical usability evaluation of graphical modeling languages in business process and software modeling. A usability evaluation framework for graphical modeling languages is proposed. The framework contains different user scenarios, usability attributes and metrics for measuring usability in the domain of graphical modeling languages.

Access Level

info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess

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