Adapting UML Activity Diagrams for Mobile Work Process Modelling: Experimental Comparison of Two Notation Alternatives

Even if geographical aspects such as location is included in several enterprise architecture frameworks [15], enterprise modelling notations seldom capture the "where" aspect, such as the location for performing some activity in a business process. However, for mobile information systems it is often relevant to model where something is supposed to take place. In a previous paper, we suggested some alternatives for small modifications to UML Activity Diagrams to address this, but then only comparing the alternatives analytically. In this paper, we report on a controlled experiment comparing the two most promising notations from the previous paper, one adding location to the activity diagrams by annotations, another indicating location by colour. The experiment investigated both the participants’ opinions about the notations and their performance on some tasks requiring understanding of the models. For opinion there was no significant difference, but for task performance there was a significant difference in favour of the notation using colour.