Because most information systems in real-world domains are complex, practitioners often use different types of conceptual modeling scripts to understand them. Modeling methods such as UML, for example, provide more than a dozen scripts for practitioners to use. We study how script readers decide which of several different scripts to use during systems analysis and design tasks. We carried out a free-simulation experiment to test how users select scripts based on two factors: combined ontological completeness and ontological overlap. We find that participants indeed decided to select more than one script to achieve a more complete domain representation. But, when they selected more than three scripts, they decided to remove scripts and reduce combined completeness to increase the clarity of the combined representation. Our results indicate that script readers prefer relatively less complete scripts with high levels of clarity over more complete, but more overlapping, script combinations. We detail the implications these findings have for the theory and the practice of conceptual modeling.

由于现实世界中的大多数信息系统都很复杂，因此从业者通常会使用不同类型的概念建模脚本来理解它们。例如，UML 等建模方法提供了十多种脚本供从业者使用。我们研究脚本阅读器如何决定在系统分析和设计任务期间使用几种不同的脚本中的哪一种。我们进行了一个自由模拟实验，以测试用户如何基于两个因素选择脚本：组合本体完整性和本体重叠。我们发现参与者确实决定选择多个脚本来实现更完整的域表示。但是，当他们选择了三个以上的脚本时，他们决定删除脚本并降低组合完整性，以提高组合表示的清晰度。我们的结果表明，脚本阅读者更喜欢相对不太完整但清晰度较高的脚本，而不是更完整但重叠程度更高的脚本组合。我们详细介绍了这些发现对概念建模的理论和实践的影响。