Beyond Boxes and Lines: Creating and Empirically Evaluating Alternative Visualizations for Requirements Conceptual Models

Abstract

[Background]: Conceptual modeling languages have been widely studied in requirements engineering as tools for capturing, representing and reasoning about domain problems. One of these languages, goal models, has been proposed for representing the structure of stakeholder intentions. Like most other conceptual modeling languages, goal models are visualized using box-and-line diagrammatic notations. But is this box-and-line approach the best way for visualizing goals and relationships thereof? Through a series of experimental studies we have recently endeavored to find out. In this presentation, we describe features of our alternative visualization proposals and present experiences gained from our attempts to empirically evaluate them. Central to what we learned is the usefulness of distinguishing between language visualization and intended language semantics and of measuring the degree by which the former serves correct recognition of the latter. Our experience from these studies could be useful for those interested in experimentally-driven conceptual modeling language design.