A Study to Explore How Differences in the Amount of Details in Visualization Impact Decision-making

This study explores how differences in the amount of details in visualization impact the decision-making process. Everyday decisions like buying a used car are the focus of the study. A visualization tool that is able to show different number of attributes was designed and developed using JavaScript library d3. Twenty users participated in the user study and were asked to make car-buying decisions based on the observation of different levels of details of car information presented in the developed visualization tool. Two patterns of the decision-making process were summarized. The increasing number of details in information visualization does not always influence participants' decision-making, while the value range and the level of importance of the newly added attributes turned out to be more influential on participants' decision-making processes. A weak correlation between level of confidence and the number of details in information visualization is found.Master of Science in Information Scienc

Génération automatique de configurations et de scénarios d'utilisation d'outils de visualisation à partir de spécifications de tâches d'analyse de logiciels

Nous proposons une approche qui génère des scénarios de visualisation à partir des descriptions de tâches d'analyse de code. La dérivation de scénario est considérée comme un processus d'optimisation. Dans ce contexte, nous évaluons différentes possibilités d'utilisation d'un outil de visualisation donnée pour effectuer la tâche d'analyse, et sélectionnons le scénario qui nécessite le moins d'effort d'analyste. Notre approche a été appliquée avec succès à diverses tâches d'analyse telles que la détection des défauts de conception.We propose an approach that derives interactive visualization scenarios from descriptions of code analysis tasks. The scenario derivation is treated as an optimization process. In this context, we evaluate different possibilities of using a given visualization tool to perform the analysis task, and select the scenario that requires the least effort from the analyst. Our approach was applied successfully to various analysis tasks such as design defect detection and feature location

Visualization of the Static aspects of Software: a survey

International audienceSoftware is usually complex and always intangible. In practice, the development and maintenance processes are time-consuming activities mainly because software complexity is difficult to manage. Graphical visualization of software has the potential to result in a better and faster understanding of its design and functionality, saving time and providing valuable information to improve its quality. However, visualizing software is not an easy task because of the huge amount of information comprised in the software. Furthermore, the information content increases significantly once the time dimension to visualize the evolution of the software is taken into account. Human perception of information and cognitive factors must thus be taken into account to improve the understandability of the visualization. In this paper, we survey visualization techniques, both 2D- and 3D-based, representing the static aspects of the software and its evolution. We categorize these techniques according to the issues they focus on, in order to help compare them and identify the most relevant techniques and tools for a given problem

Explorative Graph Visualization

Netzwerkstrukturen (Graphen) sind heutzutage weit verbreitet. Ihre Untersuchung dient dazu, ein besseres Verständnis ihrer Struktur und der durch sie modellierten realen Aspekte zu gewinnen. Die Exploration solcher Netzwerke wird zumeist mit Visualisierungstechniken unterstützt. Ziel dieser Arbeit ist es, einen Überblick über die Probleme dieser Visualisierungen zu geben und konkrete Lösungsansätze aufzuzeigen. Dabei werden neue Visualisierungstechniken eingeführt, um den Nutzen der geführten Diskussion für die explorative Graphvisualisierung am konkreten Beispiel zu belegen.Network structures (graphs) have become a natural part of everyday life and their analysis helps to gain an understanding of their inherent structure and the real-world aspects thereby expressed. The exploration of graphs is largely supported and driven by visual means. The aim of this thesis is to give a comprehensive view on the problems associated with these visual means and to detail concrete solution approaches for them. Concrete visualization techniques are introduced to underline the value of this comprehensive discussion for supporting explorative graph visualization

Visualisation de la qualité des logiciels de grandes taille

Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal

Software Visualization in 3D: Implementation, Evaluation, and Applicability

The focus of this thesis is on the implementation, the evaluation and the useful application of the third dimension in software visualization. Software engineering is characterized by a complex interplay of different stakeholders that produce and use several artifacts. Software visualization is used as one mean to address this increasing complexity. It provides role- and task-specific views of artifacts that contain information about structure, behavior, and evolution of a software system in its entirety. The main potential of the third dimension is the possibility to provide multiple views in one software visualization for all three aspects. However, empirical findings concerning the role of the third dimension in software visualization are rare. Furthermore, there are only few 3D software visualizations that provide multiple views of a software system including all three aspects. Finally, the current tool support lacks of generating easy integrateable, scalable, and platform independent 2D, 2.5D, and 3D software visualizations automatically. Hence, the objective is to develop a software visualization that represents all important structural entities and relations of a software system, that can display behavioral and evolutionary aspects of a software system as well, and that can be generated automatically. In order to achieve this objective the following research methods are applied. A literature study is conducted, a software visualization generator is conceptualized and prototypically implemented, a structured approach to plan and design controlled experiments in software visualization is developed, and a controlled experiment is designed and performed to investigate the role of the third dimension in software visualization. The main contributions are an overview of the state-of-the-art in 3D software visualization, a structured approach including a theoretical model to control influence factors during controlled experiments in software visualization, an Eclipse-based generator for producing automatically role- and task-specific 2D, 2.5D, and 3D software visualizations, the controlled experiment investigating the role of the third dimension in software visualization, and the recursive disk metaphor combining the findings with focus on the structure of software including useful applications of the third dimension regarding behavior and evolution

Visual Realism for the Visualization of Software Metrics

This work has been published in [1] and carried out as part of the Reconstructor Project led by Arie van Deursen, which aims at raising the state of the art in software architecture reconstruction. Reconstructor takes the Symphony Java source code that is hierarchically organized into packages, classes, and methods is converted into a treemap. The size of each leaf node is determined by a user-specified source code attribute corresponding to that particular leaf node, e.g., the number of statements. software architecture reconstruction process as its starting point [2]. One of the issues addressed is interactive visualization: How can users be enabled to understand the large amounts of information produced using visual Java source code hierarchically structured into packages, classes, and method

Visual realism for the visualization of software metrics

The visualization techniques used in current software visualization frameworks make use of a limited set of graphical elements to highlight relevant aspects of a software system. Typical examples of such elements are text, simple geometric shapes and uniform color fills. Although human visual perception enables rapid processing of additional visual cues like shading and texture, they are not used. We contend that such 2D and 3D computer graphics techniques for achieving visual realism can be used to increase the information throughput of software visualization techniques. Visualization results are presented to show how treemaps, cushions, color, texture, and bump mapping can be used to visualize software metrics of hierarchically organized elements of a software syste