171037 20260505142649.0 doi 10.1109/OJCS.2026.3682070 sideral 149065 ART-2026-149065 eng Herrera-Murillo, Dagoberto José Applicability of process mining in usability tests: a case study for identifying user mental models in geospatial search engines 2026 A fundamental challenge in digital product design is ensuring that actual mental models of users align with the intended functionality of the system. When discrepancies arise, usability can suffer, leading to inefficient interactions and reduced adoption. Usability testing lets development teams identify design problems in digital products by collecting qualitative and quantitative information. However, this technique is often not able to provide a panoramic view of the interaction with the system, especially when dealing with complex interfaces such as those used in geospatial search engines and we need to analyse the quantitative data compiled during testing. This work proposes to actively incorporate process mining into usability testing. We discuss the implications of process mining on usability testing using a case study performed at the National Geographic Institute of Spain, where a new geospatial search engine was under development. Twenty-one participants, ranging from novice to expert users, were recruited to perform a search task using the new geospatial search engine. The findings reveal that the mental model of users leans towards the archetype of a regular search engine rather than fully utilising the geographic functionalities provided by the platform, as intended by its designers. Access copy available to the general public Unrestricted info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/DGA/T59-23R info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/DGA/T60-23R info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/H2020/955569/EU/Towards a sustainable Open Data ECOsystem/ODECO This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No H2020 955569-ODECO info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess by https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.es info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersion Abad-Power, Paloma López-Pellicer, Francisco J. Universidad de Zaragoza (orcid)0000-0001-6491-7430 Baldassarri, Sandra Universidad de Zaragoza (orcid)0000-0002-9315-6391 Nogueras-Iso, Javier Universidad de Zaragoza (orcid)0000-0002-1279-0367 5007 570 Universidad de Zaragoza Dpto. Informát.Ingenie.Sistms. Área Lenguajes y Sistemas Inf. (2026), 1-12 IEEE open j. Comput. Soc. IEEE open journal of the Computer Society 5762364 http://zaguan.unizar.es/record/171037/files/texto_completo.pdf Postprint 2604275 http://zaguan.unizar.es/record/171037/files/texto_completo.jpg?subformat=icon icon Postprint oai:zaguan.unizar.es:171037 articulos driver 2026-05-05-13:36:15 ARTICLE