Collaborative Modeling of Business Processes on Co-Located TableTop Systems

Most current Business Process Management Systems (BPMS) refer to single users, working at a desktop PC individually. But especially, during the creation of process models, domain and modeling experts work together. Therefore, a collaborative BPMS offers possibilities to work in a team environment. The advantages of collaborative process modelling are improved quality and accuracy of process models. Thus, the user’s workload is reduced and the users learn from each other. This thesis presents Process-Touch, which is a collaborative BPMS, using a tabletop and additional tablets or smartphones to create process models collaboratively. Process-Touch offers an easy to use Natural User Interface (NUI), sketch-based input and the possibility to work with tablets or smartphones as a private interaction device. Users can create and edit parts of the process model on their tablets and smartphones and merge them on the tabletop using a tap gesture to transfer the process model from the mobile device to the tabletop. This thesis contributes a system for collaborative BPMS, general concepts and requirements and a prototypical implementation. Moreover, the concept is evaluated by experimental research, using the prototypical implementation. Hence, improvements of the gesture-set, interaction design and implementation are identified and discussed.

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