Myriads of complex biological and cognitive processes determine human behavior and decision making. Cognitive neuroscience and psychology are disciplines studying this behavior and fostering our general understanding of human decision making. Particularly in the field of Business Process Management, various stakeholders are involved in numerous decisions on how to analyze, model and automate the business processes of an organization. Consequently, corresponding process models constitute fundamental artifacts of every organization and are crucial with respect to process performance, effectiveness and efficiency. It is therefore of utmost importance to ensure that business processes are modeled and comprehended correctly.
For business process modeling, cognitive neuroscience and psychology entail auspicious prospects. From a cognitive viewpoint, there are fundamental issues regarding the factors influencing the creation and comprehension of process models. Focusing on process model comprehension, the conceptual framework CONSCIOUS utilizes and combines methods and theories from cognitive neuroscience and psychology. The intention of CONSCIOUS is to foster process model comprehension by providing rules, guidelines and tool-supported user assistance. Moreover, factors having an effect on process model comprehension need to be unraveled in order to enable the creation of better readable process models.
This talk introduces CONSCIOUS and shows how it can be capitalized. In detail, results, experiences and lessons learned from several studies, which apply methods and theories from cognitive neuroscience and psychology, are presented and discussed in respect to process model comprehension. Overall, CONSCIOUS shall foster process model comprehension and enable the creation of better comprehensible process models.