Informing the design of pipeline-based software visualisations

  • Authors:

  • Neville Churcher;Warwick Irwin

  • Affiliations:

  • University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand;University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand

  • Venue:
  • APVis '05 proceedings of the 2005 Asia-Pacific symposium on Information visualisation - Volume 45
  • Year:
  • 2005

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Abstract

In this paper, we consider the process by which an effective software visualisation can be designed and explore the ways in which both special-purpose and general-purpose tools may be used to inform the software visualisation design process. A series of decisions must be made in order to determine which data will contribute, the 'look & feel' of the visualisation, the algorithms, stylesheets and configuration parameters which are involved as implementation progresses. In our previous work we have developed a flexible, extensible and configurable pipeline-based approach to the implementation of software visualisation. Data is represented in XML at each stage and undergoes successive transformations as it moves through the implementation pipeline. Pipeline components capture and analyse data, compute geometry and determine the detailed presentation of visual output. In this paper, we describe a parallel pipeline for software visualisation design. Its steps involve making choices which determine the specific implementation pipeline components, together with their configurations, defining a particular visualisation. We discus issues and techniques involved in the software visualisation design pipeline, describe tools which support them, and give examples from our software visualisation research.