An Empirical Investigation Of The Cognitive Fit Of Selected Process Model Diagramming Techniques

Abstract

This paper describes an empirical investigation of the cognitive fit (defined as the degree to which a particular diagramming technique is representative of a problem space) between four process modeling techniques consisting of data flow diagrams (DFD), process maps (PM), flowcharts (FC), and Resources, Events, and Agents (REA) diagrams.

 xperimental results indicated some positive associations between three techniques (PM, DFD, and REA) and scores for questions hypothetically pertaining to each, respectively.  Contrary to the hypotheses, PM and DFD outperformed FC