Software visualizations can provide a concise overview of a complex software system. Unfortunately, since software has no physical shape, there is no “natural ” mapping of software to a two-dimensional space. As a consequence most visualizations tend to use a layout in which position and distance have no meaning, and consequently layout typical diverges from one visualization to another. We propose a consistent layout for software maps in which the position of a software artifact reflects its vocabulary, and distance corresponds to similarity of vocabulary. We use Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) to map software artifacts to a vector space, and then use Multidimensional Scaling (MDS) to map this vector space down to two dimensions. The resulting consistent layout allows us to develop a variety of thematic software maps that express very different aspects of software while making it easy to compare them. The approach is especially suitable for comparing views of evolving software, since the vocabulary of software artifacts tends to be stable over time.

Software Cartography: thematic software visualization with consistent layout ‡

3D web software visualisation has always been expensive, special purpose and hard to program. In this thesis we present a framework for evaluating software visualisation media. The framework is then applied in the evaluation of the new “eXtensible 3D ” (X3D) open standard for web 3D graphics, to determine how suitable X3D is for use in a web-based software visualisation environment. Our evaluation is based on our experience of replicating a representative sample of software visualisation techniques which are common throughout the software visualisation literature in X3D. The evaluation finds that a large range of software visualisation techniques can be implemented in X3D, however, the development of these visualisations is very time consuming and no specific software visualisation features exist. Acknowledgments I would first just like to say that my Mum and Dad and have been great support over the past few years in completing this degree and without them the struggle

Most software visualization systems and tools are designed from a single-user perspective and are bound to the desktop, IDEs, and the web. These design decisions do not allow users to collaboratively analyse software or easily interact and navigate software visualizations. We are building collaborative, interactive, multi-touch software visualization applications for multi-touch tables. Our user studies will outline the strengths and weaknesses of designing multi-touch software visualization applications and inform how users collaboratively conduct visual software analytics with multi-touch table user interfaces. CONTENTS

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