Title: Development of a usability testing procedure for process mining tools

Authors: Arabela Khan; Marcus Birkenkrahe

Addresses: Berlin Business School of Economics and Law, Badensche Str. 52, 10825 Berlin, Germany ' Lyon College, 2300 Highland Rd., Batesville, AR, 72501, USA

Abstract: Process mining tools (PMTs) use event logs to enable things like process discovery, compliance checking, and bottleneck analysis. This study addresses the lack of transparency in the fast-growing PMT market. This study is the first usability study of selected PMTs. We focus on process discovery within the purchase-to-pay (P2P) process for first-time users of PMTs. We built and executed a usability test which resulted in valuable comparative insights. For this study, event logs from the P2P process were artificially generated. Ten participants worked on ten different tasks in the P2P process while their behaviour was documented in a structured form. Each use of a tool was followed by an interview as well as a questionnaire. The results chart effectiveness, learnability, efficiency, and satisfaction for each tool, and highlight those product features that contribute to a usable PMT. We provide a guideline to test the usability of PMTs.

Keywords: PMT; process mining tools; usability testing; P2P; purchase-to-pay; procure-to-pay.

DOI: 10.1504/IJDS.2022.126852

International Journal of Data Science, 2022 Vol.7 No.2, pp.142 - 163

Received: 09 Jan 2022
Accepted: 22 Mar 2022
Published online: 09 Nov 2022 *

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