Proceedings of the 32nd ACM/IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering - Volume 2
Analysing the cognitive effectiveness of the BPMN 2.0 visual notation
SLE'10 Proceedings of the Third international conference on Software language engineering
ER'11 Proceedings of the 30th international conference on Conceptual modeling
Towards a more semantically transparent i* visual syntax
REFSQ'12 Proceedings of the 18th international conference on Requirements Engineering: foundation for software quality
Towards a requirements modeling language for self-adaptive systems
REFSQ'12 Proceedings of the 18th international conference on Requirements Engineering: foundation for software quality
REFSQ'12 Proceedings of the 18th international conference on Requirements Engineering: foundation for software quality
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Goal-oriented modelling is one of the most important research developments in the RE field. This paper conducts a systematic analysis of the visual syntax of i*, one of the leading goal-oriented languages. Like most RE notations, i* is highly visual. Yet surprisingly, there has been little debate about or modification to its graphical conventions since it was proposed more than a decade ago. We evaluate the notation using a set of evidence-based principles for visual notation design. The paper identifies some serious flaws in the i* visual notation together with some recommendations for improvement. A broader goal of the paper is to raise the level of debate and stimulate discussion about visual representation in RE research.