Towards empirically validated software architecture visualization

Visualization is a sound means to facilitate understanding of complex correlations and offers a broad variety of concepts. A problem with the visualization of software architectures is that there are almost no empirical evidences of the benefits of particular visualization concepts. That is why we introduce an approach that explicitly integrates architecture development with the selection, use and validation of visualization metaphors. We successfully applied this approach to realize our software architecture visualization tool and empirically validated the use of the visualization concepts in the software architecture domain. We claim that software architecture visualizations should always be thoroughly assessed, especially by software architects in an industrial environment.