Exploring intuitive modelling behaviour

Abstract

Understanding modelling behaviour is an important step towards situated modelling support, especially when aiming to actively involve the domain expert in modelling without expert interventions. In search for a hypothesis on which modelling acts humans exhibit naturally, this paper presents an exploratory study into the modelling approaches intuitively taken by people trained in modelling as opposed to people not trained in modelling. Participants were asked to create a concept map of either a familiar or unfamiliar knowledge domain. Analysis shows that there are differences between the approaches novice and expert modellers follow, the decisions they make in representing an aspect or not, and the level of abstraction they choose. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.