The Joy of Modelling: When EAM Becomes Child’s Play

At Boldo, we have always been fascinated by tools that disappear behind their use, tools like Notion, Miro or Airtable that seem to think with us rather than for us. Opening a page, creating a database, drawing a relationship… everything just flows naturally.

This sense of pleasure in using a tool is not anecdotal, it is a driver of performance.

And that is precisely what we wanted to understand (and replicate) in a field where user experience is often neglected: enterprise architecture.

The Link Between Stress, Cognition and User Experience

Research in cognitive psychology and neuroscience has long demonstrated it: a complex or stressful environment reduces one’s capacity for reflection, analysis, and decision-making.

The Link Between Cognition and Performance

As early as 1908, the Yerkes-Dodson law established the foundations of this relationship: a certain level of stimulation improves performance, but beyond a critical threshold, mental overload leads to a sharp decline in cognitive ability.

Too much pressure, too many steps, too much friction, and the brain switches into “execution mode,” unable to take a step back.

Curve of the Yerkes-Dodson Law

More recent studies, such as those by Amy Arnsten (Yale, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 2015), have shown that chronic stress partially deactivates the prefrontal cortex, the area responsible for executive functions such as planning, attention, working memory, and decision-making.

Under prolonged cognitive load, our brain shifts toward automatic responses at the expense of strategic thinking. In other words, the harder a task is to perform, the more mental energy it consumes, and the less is left for actual thinking.

Ergonomics as a Cognitive Lever

This dynamic lies at the heart of John Sweller’s Cognitive Load Theory (1988), which distinguishes three types of load:

the intrinsic load, linked to the inherent complexity of the subject,
the extraneous load, caused by the way information is presented,
and the germane load, which actively supports understanding.

Good tools minimise extraneous load in order to maximise germane load. Bad tools do the opposite.

Every unnecessary click, nested menu or unreadable table adds a micro-dose of cognitive stress. A confusing interface doesn’t just annoy, it directly impairs reasoning.

That’s why ergonomics is not a matter of comfort but a condition for mental clarity.

A fluid interface frees focus, an intuitive navigation reduces mental load, and a clear visualisation strengthens working memory and the understanding of relationships.

What might seem like an aesthetic choice is in fact a cognitive lever. And it’s precisely this lever that must be activated in enterprise architecture tools, not by adding complexity, but by making complexity intelligible.

Because this link between cognition and design is not merely scientific, it directly determines how organisations perceive and manage their information systems.

EAMs: For the Architecture or for the Architect?

Historically “Data-Centric” Tools

For a long time, enterprise architecture platforms were built to document before they serve, to model before they tell. They were designed around the logic of the repository: to store, organise, and standardise, but rarely to assist.

The big names of the early 2000s (MEGA, ARIS, Sparx, etc.) played a foundational role. They structured the discipline, introduced shared methodological frameworks (TOGAF, BPMN, Zachman), and allowed CIOs to describe, for the first time, the enterprise as a coherent system.

But these solutions, however powerful, were designed with a tool-centric rather than a user-centric mindset. Their functional richness came at the cost of complexity, utilitarian aesthetics, and an experience reserved for a small circle of experts capable of mastering their intricacies. They produced detailed models, yet rarely engaging representations. Business teams, executives, and partners often felt left behind.

This logic trapped enterprise architecture within its own technical excellence: a precise language, but one that few could speak; a rich repository, but difficult to share. In trying to represent everything, we forgot to ask if anyone still wanted to look.

The Rise of Modern Tools: A First Shift Toward Experience

The following decade saw a new generation of players (LeanIX, Ardoq, ValueBlue, etc.) aiming to reconcile rigour and agility. These platforms marked a genuine turning point: modern interfaces, integrations with product teams, more dynamic workflows, increased collaboration.

Enterprise Architecture was gradually shifting from a documentation tool to a management enabler.

But this evolution did not solve everything. These tools still targeted large organisations: long deployments, high costs, complex data models. And above all, they often remain trapped in a data-centric logic, the idea that an EAM’s value lies in the quantity of data it contains, rather than the clarity it provides to its users.

Progress in user experience is real, but the journey toward true user-centricity remains unfinished. Too often, these platforms are efficient but not enjoyable, comprehensive but not intuitive, powerful but still cognitively tiring.

From Technical Performance to Usability Performance

Today, an EAM can no longer be satisfied with being accurate; it must be readable, engaging, and collaborative. In other words, it must respect how humans actually think.

The “customer-centric” model is not a marketing stance, it is a cognitive one. It rests on the idea that simplicity, fluidity and beauty are levers of collective understanding. The easier a tool makes thinking, the more it liberates reflection.

This approach requires a complete rethinking of software design:

reducing the mental load of navigation so that focus is placed on meaning, not on the interface,
giving visualisation an active role, as a reasoning aid rather than mere decoration,
favouring natural collaboration over technical configuration.

That’s exactly what the great productivity tools — Notion, Miro, Figma, Airtable — have understood: users must be able to create at the speed of thought, explore effortlessly, and learn without a manual. What seems to be a matter of design is, in reality, a principle of cognitive ergonomics.

At Boldo, we follow the path opened by these modern solutions while striving to go one step further, uniting the rigour of the repository with the joy of modelling.

(Image generated by AI: Joy of Use)

Conclusion

Ultimately, we observe several approaches depending on an organisation’s maturity and culture.

Large enterprises, with vast and interconnected systems, tend to favour modelling depth and technical control.

More agile structures, by contrast, seek readability, collaboration, and tools that make architecture understandable for everyone.

At Boldo, we believe rigour only has value if it inspires engagement. An architecture tool should not only be powerful, it should be delightful to use.

Because it is this fluid, readable experience that transforms modelling into a reflex, documentation into understanding, and governance into a collective dynamic.

We are building a fluid, governed, and desirable EAM, a space where thinking, modelling, and sharing can happen as naturally as writing in Notion or drawing in Miro.