Let’s Go To The Whiteboard
Software developers are rooted in the written form of their code, yet they often draw diagrams representing their code. Unfortunately, we still know little about how and why they create these diagrams, and so there is little research to inform the design of visual tools to support developers’ work. This paper presents findings from semi-structured interviews that have been validated with a structured survey. Results show that most of the diagrams had a transient nature because of the high cost of changing whiteboard sketches to electronic renderings. Diagrams that documented design decisions were often externalized in these temporary drawings and then subsequently lost. Current visualization tools and the software development practices that we observed do not solve these issues, but these results suggest several directions for future research.
We photograph our whiteboard. I find my board gets filled with useful notes that have to eventually be scrubbed so I snap a shot. I also scan hand-written diagrams and tag them to refer to later; often I bring up these visuals in Windows Live Gallery (or Picasa) by entering the tag.
I was laughed out of the room when I told people that my pencil diagrams were just as good as Visio diagrams and they should save the hours converting them and just scan them. The time was dutifully wasted and the Visio diagrams were never updated, they were just perfect copies with straighter lines…
[...] November 20, 2009 Matt Davey recently wrote about studies of software development diagrams. [...]
Visio Vs. Pencil – Pencil Wins and You Lose « Tech Tock said this on November 20, 2009 at 12:37 pm |