Evaluating the Effectiveness of Notations for Designing Security Aspects

Existing software design approaches used to design security aspects lack notations that can be used to design the security requirements of a system which may result in more complex and dense designs. However, literature review has shown that there are some proposed notations to represent security aspects within a system. Other researchers have proposed evidence-based principles that provide basis for constructing Visual Notations in Software Engineering. The principles include: Graphic Economy, Perceptual Discriminability, Semiotic Clarity, Cognitive Integration, Visual Expressiveness etc. In this research, we have evaluated a set of proposed notations in accordance with principles for designing cognitively accepted graphics by conducting a human subject study. A questionnaire was distributed among a group of graduate and post-graduate students. The goal was to validate the notations based on theory of “How Visual Notations Communicate?”. This study will help researchers in developing cognitively accepted notations and set a course for designing new notations for UMLsec that are perceptually, semantically and visually expressive.