An experiment on the role of graphical elements in architecture visualization

Knodel, Jens; Muthig, Dirk; Naab, Matthias

doi:10.1007/s10664-008-9069-5

Cited by 8 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…Knodel et al (2008) evaluated the impact of changing the configuration of graphical elements in their tool, called SAVE, for software architecture visualization and evaluation. The experiment compares the influence of two configurations utilizing Tomcat web server as object system.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluación de la Técnica de Visualización Basada en Grafos: Un Experimento Controlado

Cárdenas

Aponte

2017

Enfoque UTE

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Muchos investigadores han señalado la falta de estudios empíricos que sistemáticamente examinen las ventajas y desventajas del uso de técnicas de visualización para soportar la comprensión del software. Estos estudios son indispensables para recolectar y analizar evidencia objetiva y cuantificable acerca de la utilidad de las técnicas de visualización y herramientas propuestas, y más aún, para servir como guía de la investigación en visualización de software. En este estudio, 6 tareas típicas de comprensión de software fueron realizadas por 20 estudiantes de un curso de ingeniería de software. Se midió el tiempo de respuesta y se calificó la exactitud en las respuestas de los participantes. Los resultados indican que, por una parte, el uso de la técnica de visualización basada en grafos mejoró la exactitud en las respuestas de los estudiantes (21.45% en promedio); por otra parte, no se encontró evidencia significativa de reducción en el tiempo gastado por los estudiantes para resolver las tareas de comprensión de software.

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Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluación de la Técnica de Visualización Basada en Grafos: Un Experimento Controlado

Cárdenas

Aponte

2017

Enfoque UTE

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“…Knodel et al conducted a controlled experiment with 29 subjects (researchers and graduate students on software engineering) to investigate the role of configurable graphical elements in architecture understanding [7]. Configurability in this work means, for example, enabling and/or disabling certain graphical elements.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We focused on the understanding of architecture design since understandability is one of the main factors which influence the maintainability of software design [27] and it is also considered as one of major quality characteristics that an engineering model should have [33]. An architecture design should be first understood well before any changes can be applied to it [7]. The goal of this study is to investigate whether using ADDs can improve the understanding of architecture design and the reasoning behind the design rationale.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do architectural design decisions improve the understanding of software architecture? two controlled experiments

Shahin

Liang

2014

Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Program Comprehension

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Architectural design decision (ADD) and its design rationale, as a paradigm shift on documenting and enriching architecture design description, is supposed to facilitate the understanding of architecture and the reasoning behind the design rationale, which consequently improves the architecting process and gets better architecture design results. But the lack of empirical evaluation that supports this statement is one of the major reasons that prevent industrial practitioners from using ADDs in their daily architecting activities. In this paper, we conducted two controlled experiments, as a family of experiments, to investigate how presence of ADDs can improve the understanding of architecture. The main results of our experiments are: (i) using ADDs and their rationale in architecture documentation does not affect the time needed for completing architecture design tasks; (ii) one experiment and the family of experiments achieved a significantly better understanding of architecture design when using ADDs; and (iii) with regard to the correctness of architecture understanding, more experienced participants benefited more from ADDs in comparison with less experienced ones.

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“…Knodel et al presented the results of a controlled experiment for the evaluation of the role of graphical elements in visualization of software architecture [KMN08]. In a preliminary step, the authors verified the soundness of the tasks with the help of two experts in the object system (i.e., Tomcat).…”

Section: Learning From Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Software systems as cities

Wettel

Lanza

Robbes

2011

Proceedings of the 33rd International Conference on Software Engineering

149

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Software understanding takes up a large share of the total cost of a software system. The high costs attributed to software understanding activities are caused by the size and complexity of software systems, by the continuous evolution that these systems are subject to, and by the lack of physical presence which makes software intangible. Reverse engineering helps practitioners deal with the intrinsic complexity of software, by providing a broad range of patterns and techniques. One of these techniques is software visualization, which makes software more tangible, by providing visible representations of software systems.Interpreting a visualization is by no means trivial and requires knowledge about the visual language of the visualization. One means to ease the learning of a new visualization's language are metaphors, which allow the interpretation of new data representations by analogy. Possibly one of the most popular metaphors for software visualization is the city metaphor, which has been explored in the past by a number of researchers. However, in spite of the efforts, the value of this metaphor for reverse engineering has never been taken beyond anecdotical evidence.In this dissertation, we demonstrate the value of the city metaphor for reverse engineering along two directions. On the one hand, we show that the metaphor is versatile enough to allow the representation of different facets of software. On the other hand, we show that the city metaphor enables the creation of software visualizations which efficiently and effectively support reverse engineering activities.Our interpretation of the city metaphor at its core depicts the system as a city, the packages as districts, and the classes as buildings. The resulting "code city" visualization provides a structural overview of the software system, enriched with contextual data. To be able to perform analyses of real systems using our approach, we implemented a tool called CodeCity.We demonstrate the versatility of the metaphor, by using it in three different analysis contexts, i.e., program comprehension, software evolution analysis, and software design quality assessment. For each of the contexts, we describe the visualization techniques we employ to encode the contextual data in the visualization and we illustrate the application by means of case studies. The insights gained in the three analysis contexts are complementary to each other, leading to an increasingly more complete "big picture" of the systems.We then demonstrate how the visualizations built on top of our city metaphor effectively and efficiently support reverse engineering activities, by means of an extensive controlled experiment. The design of our experiment is based on a list of desiderata that we extracted from our survey of the current body of research. We conducted the experiment over a period of six months, in four sites located in three countries, with a heterogeneous sample of subjects composed of fair shares of both academics and industry practitioners. The main result of ...

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An experiment on the role of graphical elements in architecture visualization

Cited by 8 publications

References 26 publications

Evaluación de la Técnica de Visualización Basada en Grafos: Un Experimento Controlado

Evaluación de la Técnica de Visualización Basada en Grafos: Un Experimento Controlado

Do architectural design decisions improve the understanding of software architecture? two controlled experiments

Software systems as cities

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