Human-Centric Process-Aware Information
Systems (HC-PAIS)
Sonja Kabicher-Fuchs1, Stefanie Rinderle-Ma1, Jan Recker2,
Marta Indulska3, Francois Charoy4, Rob Christiaanse5, Reinhold Dunkl1,
Gregor Grambow6, Jens Kolb6, Henrik Leopold7, and Jan Mendling8
1University of Vienna, Austria
2Queensland University of Technology, Australia
j.reck[email protected]
3The University of Queensland, Australia
m.indulsk[email protected]
4Universite de Lorraine, France
charo[email protected]
5Free University Amsterdam, The Netherlands
6Ulm University, Germany
gregor.grambow,jens.k[email protected]
7HU Berlin, Germany
henrik.leop[email protected]u-berlin.de
8Vienna University of Economics and Business
November 2012, TR-201211213534 (local report no.)
Abstract
Process-Aware Information Systems (PAIS) support organizations
in managing and automating their processes. A full automation of
processes is in particular industries, such as service-oriented markets,
not practicable. The integration of humans in PAIS is necessary to
manage and perform processes that require human capabilities, judg-
ments and decisions. A challenge of interdisciplinary PAIS research is
to provide concepts and solutions that support human integration in
PAIS and human orientation of PAIS in a way that provably increase
the PAIS users’ satisfaction and motivation with working with the
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arXiv:1211.4986v1 [cs.HC] 21 Nov 2012
Human-Centric Process Aware Information System (HC-PAIS) and
consequently influence users’ performance of tasks. This work is an
initial step of research that aims at providing a definition of Human-
Centric Process Aware Information Systems (HC-PAIS) and future
research challenges of HC-PAIS. Results of focus group research are
presented.
Keywords: Human-Centric Process-Aware Information System (HC-
PAIS), human factors, human orientation, human involvement, human
resources, human agents, actors, process performers
1 Introduction
Process-Aware Information Systems (PAIS), such as workflow systems, aim
to increase the efficient performance of an organization’s processes. However,
there seems to be unexploited potentials in research for the development of
concepts, implementations, and evaluations that address the inclusion of
humans in such systems.
As indicated in [6], scattered works address human orientation in PAIS
by considering different aspects such as the interaction of automated and
human workflows [2, 3], human interactions [12, 7], flexibility in workflow
enactment [4], resource allocation for skill acquisition and diversification in
organizations [1], business processes understandability [10, 9], and tuning
of functionalities in a human-oriented way [13]. These works contributed
more or less towards solutions and research that support and acknowledge a
brighter inclusion of humans in PAIS. However, there is far more potential
for new innovations than exploited in PAIS research so far. For example, we
miss:
•research in PAIS that deals with motivation and satisfaction of humans
working with such systems.
•research that provides proven concepts that integrate humans’ knowl-
edge, skills, competencies, needs, wishes and goals into PAIS systems.
•terminology that puts up an umbrella over all the contributions that
aim at including humans into PAIS.
In this paper we conducted focus group research in a preliminary research
stage to gather the participants’ understanding of Human-Centric Process-
Aware Information Systems (HC-PAIS). The goal of this first research step
was to define HC-PAIS and to collect future research topics of HC-PAIS.
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2 Methodology
In this work focus group research was conducted. Focus groups rely on in-
teraction and discussions within the group directed by a moderator [11] and
which refer to particular topics provided by the researcher [5]. Thereby focus
groups aim at drawing on the respondents’ attributes, such as attitudes and
experiences [5]. Focus groups are organized events [5]. They are focused in
the sense that they involve some kind of collective activity [8]. Focus groups
generally involve eight to twelve participants [11]. They can be used during
different phases of the research, such as the preliminary or exploratory stage
of a study [5]. Focus groups can be considered as an information-gathering
technique and as research tool for in-depth qualitative research [11]. Advan-
tages of focus groups are, for example, the interaction between participants
and the elicitation of (multiple) views and understandings [5]. The bene-
fit of focus groups to participants are, for example, the opportunity to be
involved in decision making processes, and to be valued as experts [5].
2.1 HC-PAIS Focus Group (FG)
The HC-PAIS focus group was conducted in June 2012 during the working
session of the 1st International Human-Centric Process-Aware Information
System (HC-PAIS) Workshop and the Workshop on Governance, Risk and
Compliance (GRCIS) which were held in conjunction at the CAiSE 2012.
The working session comprised eight participants and two members of the
research team (one of them took the role of the moderator). Participants of
the working session were mainly authors and presenters of the HC-PAIS and
GRCIS workshop papers. We consider the working session participants as
a kind of focus group based on the commonality that each participant pub-
lished a scientific contribution that considered to some extent humans in the
context of Business Process Management or Process-Aware Information Sys-
tems (e.g. stakeholder-centric modeling, human-centric workflows, human-
centric abstraction, natural language transformation into process models,
process model understandability, patients, practitioners, user and developer
perspectives) via the publishers ACM, Elsevier, IEEE, and Springer in the
period 2006-2012.
The goals of the focus group were (a) to define what is meant by human
orientation in Process-Aware Information Systems, and (b) to collect future
research topics in the context of Human-Centric Process Aware Information
Systems. To address the first goal (a), focus group participants were asked
to elaborate a flipchart in a small group to the question ’What do you under-
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stand by human-orientation in PAIS?’. The flipcharts were then presented
to the focus group members and were discussed. To address the second goal
(b), focus group participants were asked to individually write three research
topics of human-orientation in PAIS on moderation cards (one topic per
moderation card). The participants should consider a call for papers for a
conference that concentrates on human-orientation in PAIS. The modera-
tion cards were then pinned on a board and explained to the focus group by
each participant.
3 HC-PAIS Definition and Research Topics
In this chapter we present results of the HC-PAIS focus group. The first
step of the focus group towards defining human orientation in PAIS was to
brainstorm to the question ’What do you understand by human-orientation
in PAIS?’ in three small groups. The lists of ideas that were spontaneously
contributed by the members are illustrated in Table 1.
Group 1 Group 2 Group 3
- supportive, not restrictive Tasks: Usability
- ease of use - Commitments -Efficient
- adaptability, flexibility - Working - Acceptance
- customized to target group/
domain/ culture/ expertise
- Deciding - Ergonomic
- context-aware - Notifying - Individualization of
processes
- be-directional - Crowdsourcing - Patterns out of in-
dividual processes
- granularity Theory:
- not restricted to business - cognitive fit/load
- diversity - institutional economies
- connectivity - cultural dimension
- motivation - activity theory
- privacy, fear, control - expertise
- development - leadership/ mgmt
- efficiency - Speech Act Theory
- creativity - Language Action Per-
spective
- (explicit) feedback Roles:
- self-adapting - process owner
- interface design - process analyst
- multiple devices and mobility - process participants
- collaboration - system engineer
- knowledge dissemination - knowledge sharing
- error proof - Human-Centric PAIS
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Group 1 Group 2 Group 3
- ad-hoc - end user modeling
- pockets of ’dynamicity’ - collaboration
- audit trail - culture
- guidance (adaptive level) - motivation
- variable prescriptivity - principle-agent
- communication btw. users - politics
- governance
- adaptation
- cognitive fit
- social aspects
Table 1: FG - What do you understand by human-orientation in PAIS?
After the brainstroming session in small groups, the flipcharts were pre-
sented to all participants of the working session. The flipcharts were the ba-
sis for the next phase in which jointly ingredients of the definition for Human-
Centric Process-Aware Information Systems (HC-PAIS) were brought to-
gether. The result of the defining phase is illustrated in the following.
Definition 1 (Human-Centric Process-Aware Information System)
A Human-Centric Process-Aware Information System (HC-PAIS) is rather
qualifying than defining an Information System. The consequence of a HC-
PAIS will be happiness, motivation, and satisfaction and consequently better
performance of humans working with the HC-PAIS. The focus of a HC-PAIS
is on process participants. Process participants are humans working with the
PAIS to perform organization’s processes. The qualification of Information
Systems for HC-PAIS is connected to technology acceptance. HC-PAIS is
the behavioral perspective on (a) human interaction, (b) human-system in-
teraction, and (c) their interaction in processes, facilitated by PAIS.
In the next phase, ideas of future research topics in the field of Human-
Centric PAIS were collected in the focus group. Focus group members were
asked to mention three future research topics of Human-Centric PAIS and
three future research topics that link the areas human orientation in PAIS
and governance, risk and compliance. The pinboard moderation method led
to a list of topics. The collected research topics were grouped into different
fields, as illustrated in Figure 1.
4 Conclusion
This contribution is a preliminary step of a research study that concentrates
on Human-Centric Process-Aware Information Systems (HC-PAIS). In this
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HC-PAIS
research topics
Compliance, Risk, Governance
E.g.:
- Role conflicts/motivation - compliance behavior
- Feedback risk assessment
- Compliance rule acquisition
- Opportunistic behavior in processes
- Compliance feedback
- Individualization of processes in the field of compliance rules
- Tension between individualizing and conformance
- Power distance and level of process control
- Culture implications for the enforcement of risk and compliance rules
- Quality assurance in crowd sourcing
- Compliance, violence, visualizaiton
- Evolutionary dynamics, bounded rationality versus control choices
- Context-aware disseminariton of risk and compliance data
- Representation of risks/rules in the process (incl. user explanation)
- Utilization of information about user behavior for goverance and risk databases
Privacy
E.g.:
- Privacy and social collaborative process (e.g. privacy enforcement)
User Integration into Design
E.g.:
- Approaches for addressing diversity in the environment (e.g. users, tool landscape)
- Cognitive load theory integration in PAIS design
- Development of user-centric automatisms and feedback loops
- Cultural differences reflection in PAIS design (e.g. ID, task assignment)
- Description of users in PAIS
- User properties in context modeling
- Context-integration in PAiS and customization
- Community-based process design (e.g. crowd sourcing)
E.g.:
- Human satisfaction measurements
Evaluations
User Support
E.g.:
- Guidelines for process innovation/adaptation
- Process modeling guidance
Visualization
E.g.:
- Personalized process visualization/representation
- Business Process visualization
Figure 1: HC-PAIS Research Topic Collection
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work we present results of a focus group that aimed at providing a definition
of HC-PAIS and future research challenges of HC-PAIS. Future work will
include a Delphi study with selected experts in the field of human resources
and resource allocation in PAIS to provide a collection of current and future
research challenges of HC-PAIS in a more validated way. Furthermore, we
will continue our research [6] that aims at providing concepts that integrate
human capabilities (such as experiences, skills, qualifications) into PAIS in a
reliable and contemporary way to use them for task allocation that supports
users development goals.
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