Visualization and exploration of optimal variants in product line engineering

The decision-making process in Product Line Engineering (PLE) is often concerned with variant qualities such as cost, battery life, or security. Pareto-optimal variants, with respect to a set of objectives such as minimizing a variant's cost while maximizing battery life and security, are variants in which no single quality can be improved without sacrificing other qualities. We propose a novel method and a tool for visualization and exploration of a multi-dimensional space of optimal variants (i.e., a Pareto front). The visualization method is an integrated, interactive, and synchronized set of complementary views onto a Pareto front specifically designed to support PLE scenarios, including: understanding differences among variants and their positioning with respect to quality dimensions; solving trade-offs; selecting the most desirable variants; and understanding the impact of changes during product line evolution on a variant's qualities. We present an initial experimental evaluation showing that the visualization method is a good basis for supporting these PLE scenarios.