An experiment on the role of graphical elements in architecture visualization

The evolution and maintenance of large-scale software systems requires first an understanding of its architecture before delving into lower-level details. Tools facilitating the architecture comprehension tasks by visualization provide different sets of configurable, graphical elements to present information to their users. We conducted a controlled experiment that exemplifies the critical role of such graphical elements when aiming at understanding the architecture. In our setting, a different configuration of graphical elements had significant influence on program comprehension tasks. In particular, a 63% gain in effectiveness in architectural analysis tasks was achieved simply by changing the configuration of the graphical elements of the same tool. Based on the results, we claim that significant effort should be spent on the configuration of architecture visualization tools and that configurability should be a requirement for such tools.

Matthias Naab (Corresponding author)Email:

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Jens Knodel   is a scientist at the Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering (IESE) in Kaiserslautern, Germany. As an applied researcher in the department “Product Line Architectures” he works in several industrial and research projects in the context of product line engineering and software architectures. His main research interests are architecture compliance checking, software evolution, and architecture reconstruction. Jens Knodel is the architect of the Fraunhofer SAVE tool (the acronym SAVE stands for Software Architecture Evaluation and Visualization). Dirk Muthig   heads the division “Software Development” at the Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering (IESE). He has been involved in the definition, development, and transfer of Fraunhofer PuLSE (Product Line Software Engineering) methodology since 1997. Further, he leads the research and technology transfer in the area of “Software and Systems Architecture”. He received a diploma in computer science, as well as a Ph.D., from the Technical University of Kaiserslautern. Matthias Naab   is an engineer at the Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering (IESE). He works in the areas of software- and system architectures and product lines. In several industry projects, he was involved in architecture evaluations of large-scale information systems from different industries and customers. To the Fraunhofer SAVE tool, he contributed the visualization component. Matthias Naab received a diploma in computer science from the Technical University of Kaiserslautern in 2005.