Some Key Principles for Creating Good Visual Models

This paper discusses the importance of key principles for creating good visual models. Sections I to II discuss software and system development, different types of techniques and modeling approaches are used. Visual modeling is suited to developing systems because these notations are understandable by different stakeholders. Visual modeling can make use of graphs. The paper is presented as follows. 1. Introduction: Information and software systems require the use of methods and notations for proper representation. Unfortunately many users do not appreciate the need for creating suitable and aesthetically good diagrammatic notations 2. Background: Different modeling notations can be used to model systems. The key principles behind these notations are based on principles of tidiness, neatness, constructability and the level of detail. Different works and findings are presented. 3. Problem Formulation/ Problem Statement: This section presents various problems with visual modeling. In reality the use of good principles for creating the models are not necessarily identified, considered and adhered to when diagrammatic notations are used. 4. Proposed Solutions: several key principles are used as solutions. These are : i) abstraction, ii) universality, iii) aesthetics, iv) correct sequence and v) patterns. Their importance is explained and it is indicated how these can improve and solve the overall diagrammatic modeling approach. 5. Some Toy Examples: This part shows the ideas presented in the proposed solutions being applied in practice. Models can have several characteristics and still be useful and offer good representation. 6. Discussion and Existing Problems: Explains the validity of the toy examples and how this can be extended to other models. However several problems still remain and these are not straightforward to solve. These issues are explained in this part. 7. Conclusion: Summarizes the paper and explains other issues that can be tackled in the future.