Understanding Relationships with Attributes in Entity-Relationship Diagrams

Conceptual modeling is an important task undertaken during the systems development process to build a representation of those features of an application domain that are important to stakeholders. In spite of its importance, however, substantial evidence exists to show that it is not done well. Designers often provide incomplete, inaccurate, or inconsistent representations of domain features in the conceptual models they prepare. Users often have difficulty understanding the meaning inherent in a conceptual model. In this paper, we investigate the proposition that part of the difficulties that stakeholders experience with conceptual modeling arises when a conceptual modeling grammar or a representation produced using the grammar lacks ontological clarity. Lack of ontological clarity arises when a one-one mapping does not exist between conceptual modeling constructs and real-world constructs. For example, the grammatical construct of an entity is used to represent both things and events in the real world. Specifically, we focus on the grammatical construct of a relationship with attributes, which is often used in entity-relationship modeling. We argue that use of this construct produces ontologically unclear representations of a domain. We also report results from an experiment we undertook where we investigated the impact of using relationships with attributes in conceptual modeling representations on the problem-solving performance of users of these representations. Consistent with our predictions, we found that using relationships with attributes undermined problem-solving performance in unfamiliar domains. Contrary to our predictions, however, their use did not undermine problem-solving performance in familiar domains

Measuring User Beliefs and Attitudes towards Conceptual Schemas: Tentative Factor and Structural Equation Model

Human factors research in conceptual modeling is scarce. Recently, quality assurance frameworks, methods and tools for conceptual schemas have received increased research attention, but the perception of quality by schema users has largely been ignored in this stream of research. This paper proposes a tentative model of user beliefs and attitudes towards the quality of conceptual schemas. The proposed model is original in the sense that it includes both perceived semantic quality and perceived pragmatic quality measures. The paper also presents a new measurement instrument for the perceived semantic quality of conceptual schemas. This instrument was used in a classroom experiment that tested the proposed user beliefs and attitudes model. It was shown that the perceived semantic quality of a schema is directly related to its perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use and indirectly to the user satisfaction with the schema

TOWARDS A RESEARCH METHOD FOR THEORYDRIVEN DESIGN RESEARCH

In this paper we outline a new methodical approach for integrating theories into the design research process. Incorporating theories in design projects allows design researchers to reason on the effects of the IT artifact prior to its realization. We argue that design decisions should be transparent claims of utility based on theory-grounded arguments. Documenting design decisions requires the design researcher to integrate appropriate theories and document the rationale behind a particular design decision. Overall, we demonstrate on the example of constructing a new modeling grammar how to integrate theories in the design research process and discuss conflicts which occur when applying these theories

Ontological clarity and comprehension in health data models

Conceptual modeling forms an important part of systems analysis. If this is done incorrectly or incompletely, there can be serious implications for the resultant system, specifically in terms of rework and useability. One approach to improving the conceptual modelling process is to evaluate how well the model represents reality. Emergence of the Bunge-Wand-Weber (BWW) ontological model introduced a platform to classify and compare the grammar of conceptual modelling languages. This work applies the BWW theory to a real world example in the health arena. The general practice computing group data model was developed using the Barker Entity Relationship Modelling technique. We describe an experiment, grounded in ontological theory, which evaluates how well the GPCG data model is understood by domain experts. The results show that with the exception of the use of entities to represent events, the raw model is better understood by domain expert

New SCAMPERS: Reclassifying and redefining thinking skills

It has long been known that the SCAMPER checklist is a useful tool for developing creative thinking. However, the meanings of some words might change based on the different interpretations of the users. Here we aimed to reorganize this model to avoid placing different thinking directions into the same category. We designed a new checklist, including Substitute, Combine, Adjust, Modify, Permute, Eliminate, Repurpose, and Size, and renamed it NEW SCAMPERS. Using a questionnaire, we tested the participants’ understanding of the checklist’s meanings and its application. We recruited 194 students from three campuses and analyzed 191 completed answers. We found that students can comprehend the new classified category, and most do well on the application inspection. Thus, the new checklist was proven to be an appropriate technique for group creative thinking

New SCAMPERS: Reclassifying and redefining thinking skills

It has long been known that the SCAMPER checklist is a useful tool for developing creative thinking. However, the meanings of some words might change based on the different interpretations of the users. Here we aimed to reorganize this model to avoid placing different thinking directions into the same category. We designed a new checklist, including Substitute, Combine, Adjust, Modify, Permute, Eliminate, Repurpose, and Size, and renamed it NEW SCAMPERS. Using a questionnaire, we tested the participants’ understanding of the checklist’s meanings and its application. We recruited 194 students from three campuses and analyzed 191 completed answers. We found that students can comprehend the new classified category, and most do well on the application inspection. Thus, the new checklist was proven to be an appropriate technique for group creative thinking

Associations and Mutual Properties - An Experimental Assessment

Associations are a widely used construct of object-oriented languages. However, the meaning of associations for conceptual modelling of application domains remains unclear. Ontological considerations in past research suggest that associations are related to the concept of mutual properties. Specifically, previous research has suggested that mutual properties, not associations, should be modelled, and guidelines for doing this in UML have been offered. This paper presents the results of an experimental study, which suggest that this guidance does in fact lead to improved models