TY - GEN
T1 - Unlocking visual understanding
T2 - 35th International Conference on Conceptual Modelling, ER 2016 held in conjunction with Workshops on AHA, MoBiD, MORE-BI, MReBA, QMMQ, SCME and WM2SP, 2016
AU - Genon, Nicolas
AU - Perrouin, Gilles
AU - Le Pallec, Xavier
AU - Heymans, Patrick
PY - 2016
Y1 - 2016
N2 - Diagrams are (meant to be) effective communication supports to convey information to stakeholders. Being communication supports, they have to be quickly and accurately understood. To enable immediateness, many disciplines such as cartography rely on keys, which categorise diagram symbols and bind them to their meaning. Software engineering extensively relies on visual languages such as UML to communicate amongst the many stakeholders involved in information systems’ life-cycle. Yet, keys are barely used in these diagrams, hindering (immediate) understanding and limiting it to language experts. We provide a disciplined approach to design effective keys, by adapting graphic semiology theory and cartographers’ know-how to software diagrams.We illustrate our method on a UML class diagram. Designing effective keys raises questions about the concerns and tasks to be addressed by the diagram, and even, reveals issues about the language itself.
AB - Diagrams are (meant to be) effective communication supports to convey information to stakeholders. Being communication supports, they have to be quickly and accurately understood. To enable immediateness, many disciplines such as cartography rely on keys, which categorise diagram symbols and bind them to their meaning. Software engineering extensively relies on visual languages such as UML to communicate amongst the many stakeholders involved in information systems’ life-cycle. Yet, keys are barely used in these diagrams, hindering (immediate) understanding and limiting it to language experts. We provide a disciplined approach to design effective keys, by adapting graphic semiology theory and cartographers’ know-how to software diagrams.We illustrate our method on a UML class diagram. Designing effective keys raises questions about the concerns and tasks to be addressed by the diagram, and even, reveals issues about the language itself.
KW - Caption
KW - Diagram understandability
KW - Key
KW - Legend
KW - Visual effectiveness
KW - Visual immediacy
KW - Visual modelling language
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84997284794&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/978-3-319-46397-1_39
DO - 10.1007/978-3-319-46397-1_39
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84997284794
SN - 9783319463964
VL - 9974 LNCS
T3 - Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
SP - 505
EP - 512
BT - Conceptual Modeling - 35th International Conference, ER 2016, Proceedings
PB - Springer Verlag
Y2 - 14 November 2016 through 17 November 2016
ER -