David Erni. Codemap — Improving the Mental Model of Software Developers through Cartographic Visualization. Master’s Thesis, University of Bern, July 2009. Details.

Abstract

Software is intangible and the knowledge about a software system and its architecture is often implicit. Thus the developers’mental model of their software system is an important factor in software engineering. We want to provide developers, and everyone else involved in software development, with a shared, spatial and stable mental model of their software project. We aim to reinforce this by embedding a cartographic visualization in the IDE (Integrated Development Environment). The visualization is always visible in the IDE, similar to the overview map found in many computer games. For each development task, related information is displayed on the map. In this thesis we present Codemap, an Eclipse plug-in that demonstrates the use of software cartography in the context of an IDE. We perform an informal user study to validate our assumptions about the usage of Codemap.