Software engineering whispers: The effect of textual vs. graphical software design descriptions on software design communication

• Context Software engineering is a social and collaborative activity. Communicating and sharing knowledge between software developers requires much effort. Hence, the quality of communication plays an important role in influencing project success. To better understand the effect of communication on project success, more in-depth empirical studies investigating this phenomenon are needed. Objective We investigate the effect of using a graphical versus textual design description on co-located software design communication. Method Therefore, we conducted a family of experiments involving a mix of 240 software engineering students from four universities. We examined how different design representations (i.e., graphical vs. textual) affect the ability toExplain,Understand,Recall, andActively Communicateknowledge. Results We found that the graphical design description is better than the textual in promotingActive Discussionbetween developers and improving theRecallof design details. Furthermore, compared to its unaltered version, a well-organized and motivated textual design description-that is used for the same amount of time-enhances the recall of design details and increases the amount of active discussions at the cost of reducing the perceived quality of explaining.

Ämnesord

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Data- och informationsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Computer and Information Sciences (hsv//eng)

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Data- och informationsvetenskap -- Programvaruteknik (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Computer and Information Sciences -- Software Engineering (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Software engineering

Software design

Software modeling

UML

Communication

Knowledge sharing

Graphical representation

Textual

representation

Family of experiments

knowledge

team

Computer Science

Graphical representation

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

art (ämneskategori)