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An Advanced Interactive Visualization Approach for Component-Based Software: A User Study

Authors:
Jaroslav Snajberk
Lukas Holy
Kamil Jezek
Premek Brada

Keywords: software visualization; component; UML; user study; interactivity.

Abstract:
We present a user study that compares user performance during architectural analysis using two different approaches to visualizing component-based applications structure: AIVA (Advanced Interactive Visualization Approach) and UML(Unified Modeling Language). AIVA is a research proof of concept focused on extensive use of interactivity in visualization of structure. UML is an industrial standard in the field of software visual modeling. Participants of this user study tested how fast they could perform six basic tasks which were selected so as to gain understanding of component dependencies in a medium-sized OSGi application. The results show that AIVA helps to find answers on average three times faster than UML. The study and its results provide a quantitative support for our hypothesis that the structure of component-based applications should be visualized interactively using dedicated notation rather than in static UML diagrams to improve understanding of the whole application architecture.

Pages: 213 to 219

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2012

Publication date: November 18, 2012

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-4235

ISBN: 978-1-61208-230-1

Location: Lisbon, Portugal

Dates: from November 18, 2012 to November 23, 2012