Toward Interaction-Based Evaluation of Visualization Approaches to Comprehending Program Behavior
Lyu Kaixie, Kunihiro Noda, Takashi Kobayashi · 2019
Reverse-engineered sequence diagrams are promising tools to comprehend the runtime behavior of object-oriented programs. To improve the readability and understandability of massive-scale sequence diagrams, various techniques for effectively exploring or compressing sequence diagrams have been proposed in the literature.When researchers analyze the effectiveness of these approaches through user studies, it is important to reveal not only what techniques can improve developer productivity but also how developers explore reverse-engineered sequence diagrams and how exploration and compression features are utilized.We developed a feature to record interactions between a developer and recovered sequence diagrams in our tool, SDExplorer. We show how the recorded interaction data can be used for in-depth analysis of developer activities, toward the evaluation of visualization approaches to helping behavioral comprehension.