How Cognitively Effective is a Visual Notation? On the Inherent Difficulty of Operationalizing the Physics of Notations

Abstract

The Physics of Notations [9] (PoN) is a design theory presenting nine principles that can be used to evaluate and improve the cognitive effectiveness of a visual notation. The PoN has been used to analyze existing standard visual notations (such as BPMN, UML, etc.), and is commonly used for evaluating newly introduced visual notations and their extensions. However, due to the rather vague and abstract formulation of the PoN's principles, they have received different interpretations in their operationalization. To address this problem, there have been attempts to formalize the principles, however only a very limited number of principles was covered. This research-in-progress paper aims to better understand the difficulties inherent in operationalizing the PoN, and better separate aspects of PoN, which can potentially be formulated in mathematical terms from those grounded in user-specific considerations