How Novices and Experts Understand Hierarchies in Business Process Modeling.

Conceptual models are essential for successful IT implementation, as they concisely represent the system's component structures, behavior, and relationships. However, for conceptual models to fully realize their potential, they must be understood. To this end, hierarchy has been employed in business process modeling to enhance understanding of complex models. Prior research has proposed a two-component framework to explain the effects of hierarchy on understanding. Drawing on empirical data, this work extends this framework by investigating the influence of expertise on the understanding of hierarchical business process models. Our findings indicate that experts and novices benefit from hiding task-irrelevant information in subprocesses, with experts benefiting significantly more than novices. Additionally, experts profit more from recognizing familiar patterns in subprocesses than novices. Based on our results, we propose two principles for designing hierarchy and suggest future research avenues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]