node types into position calculations will be also in-
vestigated. We are now considering circular tree lay-
outs separating sorting the nodes on the circle based
on the nodes type.
In addition, providing software process anti-
pattern visualization is currently being researched.
Anti-pattern can be detected by SPADe and the visu-
alization can be then used to provide the exploration
of the related data. The visualization challenge in this
topic is finding the proper way of visual representa-
tion of found patterns, as they are not only referring
to the static structure or time perspective.
6 CONCLUSION
In this paper, we addressed the problem of better un-
derstanding of complex structures, events and rela-
tions in software engineering projects. There are usu-
ally thousands of elements in the such projects thus
their visualization easily becomes hardly comprehen-
sible.
We propose several closely tied visualization tech-
niques which help dealing with complexity. These are
based on the details on demand principle, information
hiding and interactivity, and are manifested as a side-
bar used for node and edge reductions, cluster iden-
tification and hiding, edge elimination and interactive
highlighting.
We have implemented a toolchain which is able
to collect, transform and visualize data from software
engineering project repositories. The user is dealing
mainly with the interactive visualization part. It is
useful in the project analysis process when the user is
interactively getting familiar with a relations among
artifacts and people. It helps with creating the mental
model by easing the process of clusters creation.
While the data mining process is delegated to the
SPADe tool in the toolchain, IMiGEr presented here
concerns with a user interaction when analyzing a
project and getting familiar with its structure. Pre-
liminary evaluation shows that the presented ideas are
helpful in a large graph visualization, where one suf-
fers from visual clutter caused by the large number
of connection lines. The future work is to bring ad-
ditional point of view in the form of time perspective
and its interaction with existing approach. It should
bring the possibility of advanced filtering and includ-
ing its automated ways.
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