Modeling a business process can help one understand the process; it can also be used to communicate the process. Later on, the model can be used to execute the process, to derive a software implementation for it, or to enhance the process.

To perform these tasks, a representation of the model is needed, and different formalisms have been developed to represent a business process, for example, simple text, structured text following certain guidelines, and diagrammatic formalisms.

The first aspect addressed by the authors is to determine if there is a preference for different types of process representations when faced with different tasks. Furthermore, people have different cognitive styles and the cognitive style might also influence preferences. This is the second aspect the authors looked at. To this end, they performed an empirical study with 120 participants. The study finds that while there is an overall preference for diagrammatic style representations, preference varies depending on task and cognitive style.

Although the first result might not be surprising, details on how the preference depends on the task at hand and the cognitive style might be relevant and induce further research. The paper provides plenty of details on how the study is conducted, the results, and biases. While this might be a bit too detailed for the general reader, the details are relevant for future work and replication of the results.