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Variability in data visualization: a software product line approach

Published: 12 September 2022 Publication History

Abstract

Data visualization aims to effectively communicate quantitative information by understanding which techniques and displays work better for different circumstances and why. There are a variety of software solutions capable of generating a multitude of different visualizations of the same dataset. However, data visualization exposes a large space of visual configurations depending on the type of data to be visualized, the different displays (e.g., scatter plots, line graphs, pie charts), the visual components to encode the data (e.g., lines, dots, bars), or the specific visual attributes of those components (e.g., color, shape, size, length). Researchers and developers are not usually aware about best practices in data visualization, and they are required to learn about both the design practices that make communication effective and the low level details of the specific software tool used to generate the visualization. This paper proposes a software product line approach to model and materialize the variability of the visualization design process, guided by feature models. We encode the visualization knowledge regarding the best design practices, resolve the variability following a step-wise configuration approach, and then evaluate our proposal for a specific software visualization tool. Our solution helps researchers and developers communicate their quantitative results effectively by assisting them in the selection and generation of the visualizations that work best for each case. We open a new window of research where data visualization and variability meet each other.

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  • (2024)Requirements Elicitation in Government Projects: A Preliminary Empirical Study2024 IEEE 32nd International Requirements Engineering Conference Workshops (REW)10.1109/REW61692.2024.00025(146-154)Online publication date: 24-Jun-2024
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cover image ACM Conferences
SPLC '22: Proceedings of the 26th ACM International Systems and Software Product Line Conference - Volume A
September 2022
266 pages
ISBN:9781450394437
DOI:10.1145/3546932
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 12 September 2022

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Author Tags

  1. effective communication
  2. feature model
  3. graph
  4. quantitative data
  5. software product line
  6. variability
  7. visualization

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  • Research-article

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  • FEDER Junta de Andalucía
  • MICINN
  • Junta de Andalucía

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SPLC '22
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SPLC '22 Paper Acceptance Rate 14 of 41 submissions, 34%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 167 of 463 submissions, 36%

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View all
  • (2024)Requirements Elicitation in Government Projects: A Preliminary Empirical Study2024 IEEE 32nd International Requirements Engineering Conference Workshops (REW)10.1109/REW61692.2024.00025(146-154)Online publication date: 24-Jun-2024
  • (2024)Data visualization guidance using a software product line approachJournal of Systems and Software10.1016/j.jss.2024.112029213:COnline publication date: 1-Jul-2024
  • (2023)Mobile money fraud detection using data analysis and visualization techniquesMultimedia Tools and Applications10.1007/s11042-023-16068-483:6(17093-17108)Online publication date: 21-Jul-2023

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