MAV-Vis: A notation for model uncertainty

We apply the “Physics of Notations” theory to design MAV-Vis, a concrete syntax for partial models, i.e., models where design uncertainty is explicitly captured. To validate our implementation of this theory in creating MAV-Vis, we designed and executed an empirical user study comparing the cognitive effectiveness of MAV-Vis with the existing, ad-hoc notation, MAV-Text. We measured the ease, speed, and accuracy of each notation for reading and writing partial models.

[1]  Rick Salay,et al.  Using Macromodels to Manage Collections of Related Models , 2009, CAiSE.

[2]  Kim G. Larsen,et al.  A modal process logic , 1988, [1988] Proceedings. Third Annual Information Symposium on Logic in Computer Science.

[3]  Daniel L. Moody,et al.  The “Physics” of Notations: Toward a Scientific Basis for Constructing Visual Notations in Software Engineering , 2009, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering.

[4]  Peter P. Chen.  The entity-relationship model: toward a unified view of data , 1975, VLDB '75.

[5]  John Krogstie,et al.  Adapting UML Activity Diagrams for Mobile Work Process Modelling: Experimental Comparison of Two Notation Alternatives , 2010, PoEM.

[6]  Pierre-Yves Schobbens,et al.  Feature Diagrams: A Survey and a Formal Semantics , 2006, 14th IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE'06).

[7]  Herbert A. Simon,et al.  Why a Diagram is (Sometimes) Worth Ten Thousand Words , 1987, Cogn. Sci..

[8]  Rick Salay,et al.  Partial models: Towards modeling and reasoning with uncertainty , 2012, 2012 34th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE).

[9]  Jakob Nielsen,et al.  Usability engineering , 1997, The Computer Science and Engineering Handbook.

[10]  Patrick Heymans,et al.  Visual syntax does matter: improving the cognitive effectiveness of the i* visual notation , 2010, Requirements Engineering.

[11]  Neil A. Ernst,et al.  A Framework for Empirical Evaluation of Model Comprehensibility , 2007, International Workshop on Modeling in Software Engineering (MISE'07: ICSE Workshop 2007).

[12]  Rick Salay,et al.  Language Independent Refinement Using Partial Modeling , 2012, FASE.

[13]  Jos van Hillegersberg,et al.  Evaluating the Visual Syntax of UML: An Analysis of the Cognitive Effectiveness of the UMLFamily of Diagrams , 2009, SLE.