CocoViz with ambient audio software exploration

For ages we used our ears side by side with our ophthalmic stimuli to gather additional information, leading and supporting us in our visualization. Nowadays numerous software visualization techniques exist that aim to facilitate program comprehension. In this paper we discuss how we can support such software comprehension visualization with environmental audio and lead users to identify relevant aspects. We use cognitive visualization techniques and audio concepts described in our previous work to create an ambient audio software exploration (AASE) out of program entities (packages, classes …) and their mapped properties. The concepts where implemented in a extended version of our tool called CocoViz. Our first results with the prototype shows that with this combination of visual and aural means we can provide additional information to lead users during program comprehension tasks.

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