Chapter 7. Visualization
The previous chapter covered modeling: how we capture the design decisions that make up a software system's architecture. In practice, there are often different ways to display and interact with the information contained in those models. This is the domain of architectural visualization.
Definition. An architectural visualization defines how architectural models are depicted, and how stakeholders interact with those depictions.
This is an intentionally broad definition of visualization. Here, visualization consists of two key aspects: depiction and interaction. Put simply, a depiction is a picture or visual representation of architectural design decisions in a particular format. Visualization tools can provide one or more interaction mechanisms through which users can interact with those decisions in terms of the depiction. These mechanisms may include keyboard commands, point-and-click operations, and so on.
This chapter discusses the relationship between architecture modeling notations and visualizations, and how various modeling languages are visualized. It then covers various strategies for designing and evaluating visualizations to maximize their effectiveness. The chapter ends with a survey of various visualization techniques and evaluations of the strengths and weaknesses of each technique.
This chapter is not intended to be a treatment of techniques for usability design or information visualization in general; these subjects are too broad for the scope ...
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