Effective presentation of ontological overlap of multiple conceptual models

Conceptual models are used to help professionals understand complex information systems and solve problems during systems analysis and design. Because single model often do not represent all relevant information, typically multiple models are used in combination. To design effective combinations of models, we propose a systematic approach that uses color highlighting to foreground overlapping concepts between multiple models to help readers identify corresponding information between models. We conducted two empirical studies – an online experiment and an eye-tracking experiment – to evaluate the cognitive efficacy of this approach. Our findings suggest that color highlighting can somewhat improve participants’ domain understanding but not the efficiency of problem-solving. Findings from the eye-tracking study suggest that the use of color can have both beneficial and harmful effects, depending on the extent of overlap.