A systematic literature review on the usage of eye-tracking in understanding process models

Abstract

Purpose

Business process modeling can involve multiple stakeholders, so it is natural that problems may occur during the designing and understanding processes. One way to perceive these problems is to evaluate the comprehension of business process models through the collection of data related to the readers' eye movement via an eye-tracking device. The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive overview of the use of eye-trackers in understanding process models and to offer a research roadmap to challenge the community to address the identified limitations and open issues that require further investigation.

Design/methodology/approach

To achieve this goal, Systematic Literature Review (SLR) was performed following good practices from the Evidence-Based Software Engineering's (EBSE) field.

Findings

This study resulted in 10 primary studies selected for analysis and data extraction, from the 1,482 initially retrieved. The major findings indicate that the business process community still benefits little from the use of eye-tracking, e.g. not offering sufficient support for inexperienced designers and not having an explicit standardization in its use. These and other findings are synthesized in a research roadmap which results would benefit researchers and practitioners.

Originality/value

In the studies found, the methods used to explore eyes' movement in process models' comprehension analysis were presented as an advantage of the current study. Additionally, another aspect presented in this SRL as an originality is presenting a set of open questions, suggesting valuable topics for future research through a research script (research roadmap).

Citation

Batista Duarte, R., Silva da Silveira, D., de Albuquerque Brito, V. and Lopes, C.S. (2021), "A systematic literature review on the usage of eye-tracking in understanding process models", Business Process Management Journal, Vol. 27 No. 1, pp. 346-367. https://doi.org/10.1108/BPMJ-05-2020-0207