Visualizing Software Playfully: A Case Study of Helveg

Speaker: Adam Štěpánek, Masaryk University

Abstract: Software artifacts, from source code through logs and bug reports, can be visualized in many different ways. A software visualization can be, for example, static or interactive, in 2D or 3D, or use a visual metaphor. Software visualization can also be gamified. However, gamification can exact a heavy toll on the visualization’s usability. This talk (less than formally) introduces the idea of playful software visualization, which deliberately incorporates aesthetic elements or entices play without becoming unreadable or outright game-like. The talk also retraces my development steps for Helveg, a tool visualizing the structure of C# codebases, to share the lessons I learned in the strive to find the right balance between readability and playfulness.

Biography: Adam Štěpánek is a Ph.D. student from the Faculty of Informatics at Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic. He is part of the Visitlab research group and focuses on software visualization, data mining, and occasionally multimedia archival. Apart from research, he also works as a software developer at Riganti, a Czech software development company.

Chair: Mattia Giannaccari

*************************

In February 2019, the Software Institute started its SI Seminar Series. Every Thursday afternoon, a researcher of the Institute will publicly give a short talk on a software engineering argument of their choice. Examples include, but are not limited to novel interesting papers, seminal papers, personal research overview, discussion of preliminary research ideas, tutorials, and small experiments.

On our YouTube playlist you can watch some of the past seminars. On the SI website you can find more details on the next seminar, the upcoming seminars, and an archive of the past speakers.