Let’s Get in Touch - Decision Making about Enterprise Architecture Using 3D Visualization in Augmented Reality

Abstract

Making informed decisions about historically grown and often complex business and Information Technology (IT) landscapes can be particularly difficult. Enterprise Architecture Management (EAM) addresses this issue by enabling stakeholders to base their decisions on relevant information about the organization's current and future Enterprise Architectures (EAs). However, visualization of EA is often confronted with low usefulness perceptions. Informed by the cognitive fit theory (CFT), we argue that decision-makers benefit from interacting with EA visualizations using Augmented Reality (AR), because it enables a consistent task-related mental representation based on the natural use of decision-makers' visualspatial abilities. The goal of this paper is to demonstrate ARs suitability for EA-related decision-making. We follow the design science research (DSR) approach to develop and evaluate an AR head-mounted display (HMD) prototype, using the Microsoft HoloLens. Our results suggest that EA-related decision-making can profit from applying AR, but users find the handling of the HMD device cumbersome.

Evaluating the User Experience of an Augmented Reality Prototype for Enterprise Architecture

“…Based on our findings, we argue that especially less EA-experienced stakeholders benefit from utilizing EA visualizations in AR due to the intuitive way in which information is represented in the real world, and how the content can be manipulated [20]. As a result, we assume that this approach may address confront the low usage of EA visualization for EA-related decision-making in organizations [20].…”

“…We previously developed an AR HMD-based EA visualization prototype [20] which visualizes the frequently applied three-layer model consisting of a business, an information system, and an infrastructure layer. The model is based on the wellapplied TOGAF meta model [18] and the well-known ArchiMate notation [24] to ensure high acceptance by practitioners.…”

“…EAs, which represent timedependent structures of and relationships between business and IT landscapes [17,18] in the form of text, graphs, charts, and 2D and 3D models [19], were represented in AR in the shape of a three-layer model. Our goal in this previous study [20] was to take advantage of the above-stated AR characteristics so that we could simplify visualizations of EAs in terms of accessibility, manipulability, as well as analyzability. Based on our findings, we argue that especially less EA-experienced stakeholders benefit from utilizing EA visualizations in AR due to the intuitive way in which information is represented in the real world, and how the content can be manipulated [20].…”

“…Our goal in this previous study [20] was to take advantage of the above-stated AR characteristics so that we could simplify visualizations of EAs in terms of accessibility, manipulability, as well as analyzability. Based on our findings, we argue that especially less EA-experienced stakeholders benefit from utilizing EA visualizations in AR due to the intuitive way in which information is represented in the real world, and how the content can be manipulated [20]. As a result, we assume that this approach may address confront the low usage of EA visualization for EA-related decision-making in organizations [20].…”

VR-EA: Virtual Reality Visualization of Enterprise Architecture Models with ArchiMate and BPMN

“…Work related to EA visualization includes (Rehring et al, 2019), who applied 3D visualization in augmented reality in support of EA decision making. (Naranjo et al, 2014) describe PRIMate based on PRIMROSe, a visual graph-based enterprise analysis framework, and show a graph, treemap, and 3D visualization of an the ArchiSurance ArchiMate model.…”