Usability Evaluation of a System for Implementation of Visual Languages

Abstract

The implementation of visual languages requires a wide range of conceptual and technical knowledge. The DEViL system generates complete language implementations from high level specifications. To be applicable in real-world scenarios, the specification mechanism as well as the generated language implementations must satisfy high usability standards. In this paper, we present a systematic evaluation of the most important usability aspects of the DEViL system. We cover both, the usability of the generator and the usability of the generated products. We demonstrate that the specification mechanism has good usability characteristics on both levels. We consider this evaluation process to be applicable to similar systems as well, and thus allows the improvement of a generator system.

VisualLISA: A visual environment to develop attribute grammars

“…The same happens in the visual languages generation area. DEViL [11], a generator of visual programming languages and editors, takes advantage of AGs to define these visual outcomes. But, despite of providing excellent and usable results, the engineer needs to grasp a whole new syntax to define the AG used to produce the visual language.…”

“…The editors generated by DEViL offer syntax-directed editing and all features of commonly used editors like multi-document environment, copy-andpaste, printing, save and load of examples. Usability of the generated editors and DEViL itself can be found in [11]. DEViL is based on the compiler generator framework Eli [19], hence all of Eli's features can be used as well.…”

“…He teaches many different courses under the broader area of programming: Programming Languages and Paradigms; Compilers, Grammar Engineering and Software Analysis and Transformation; etc. Pedro Rangel Henriques has supervised Ph.D. (11), and M.Sc. ( 13) thesis, and more than 50 graduating trainingships/projects, in the areas of: language processing (textual and visual), and structured document processing; code analysis, program visulaization/animation and program comprehension; knowledge discovery from databases, data- Daniela da Cruz, received a degree in "Mathematics and Computer Science", at University of Minho, and now she is a Ph.D. student of "Computer Science" also at University of Minho, under the MAPi doctoral program.…”

Analysis of a metamodel to estimate complexity of using a domain-specific language

“…In [19] the authors discuss metrics for usability of a languagespecification environment, and the languages that it generated, based on feedback from human subjects and objective measurements. The questions were focused on ease of use for a small language and various lifecycle questions about that language, including refactoring, and extensions to larger languages.…”