icebricks Mobile Application for Business Process Modeling

In times of demanding requirements for BPM projects, providing an additional access point from a mobile device to the process modeling tool for efficient communication of process models and distributed modeling is of high importance. In this article, we present a mobile application (app) prototype for the web-based business process modeling tool icebricks. The app is realized as a hybrid app for the Google Android and Apple iOS operating systems. As such, it makes use of the advantages of mobile websites - single code repository for software updates - and native apps - device-specific functionality. The app is integrated with the icebricks web application, so redundancies in the data management are avoided. The design of the app adheres to the previously compiled usability guidelines and ensures, amongst others, the same look-and-feel for both the web application and the mobile app. The app was shaped in a design thinking workshop with developers, BPM consultants, who are using the tool, and academic BPM and usability domain experts. The functional range of the app is a subset of the web application functionality and was worked out as part of the design thinking workshop. The app was successfully evaluated by the product owner and target users, a BPM consultancy and its employees.