ESSAVis: a 2Dplus3D visual platform for speeding up the maintenance process of embedded systems

Modern embedded systems contain complex structures, as they are composed of many subsystems. Maintaining such systems requires collaboration between the engineers who designed them and the engineers who analyzed the failures in them. In this paper we present our proposed visual platform ESSAVis, a 2Dplus3D environment, to help both kinds of engineers in understanding the failure mechanisms of such systems. The goal of the proposed platform is to improve the understanding of the failure mechanisms in these systems and to reduce the communication gap between the system engineers and safety engineers. We describe the design process and the implementation of the 2Dplus3D visual platform, which was accomplished through a continuous end-user feedback. We designed a detailed evaluation study, in which we aim to measure the usability of our tool. The plan of the evaluation is designed with the help of the end-users to ensure that ESSAVis fulfills the expected goals in speeding up the analyzing process of safety aspects of embedded systems.