UML Class Diagrams: An Empirical Study of Comprehension
Software VisualizationPublished 1 January 2003
Helen C. Purchase, Linda Colpoys, David Carrington, Matthew J. McGill
Citations80
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TL;DR
A human comprehension perspective on UML class diagram notational variants reveals that the best performing notation may depend on the task for which it is used, and that personal, intuitive predictions intuitions were partly confirmed.
Abstract
Software systems are typically very large and difficult to comprehend, hence techniques for visualisation and abstraction are required to assist software development and maintenance. Graphical representations of software systems have been common for many years. The Unified Modeling Language (UML) has recently emerged as a well-accepted, standardized notation for software visualisation and abstraction [26]. The aim of this research was to conduct empirical studies so to assist users of UML and designers of CASE tools as to how they may best display UML class diagrams to support human comprehension. Two aspects of the display of UML class diagrams were considered: notation and layout. This chapter presents the results of the two experiments that were performed — experiment 1 considered notation, experiment 2 considered layout.
Keywords
Computer Science
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