A Holistic Approach to Design Understanding Through Concept Explanation
This program is tentative and subject to change.
Complex software systems consist of multiple overlapping design structures, such as abstractions, features, crosscutting concerns, or patterns. This is similar to how a human body has multiple interacting subsystems, such as respiratory, digestive, or circulatory. Unlike in the medical domain, software designers do not have an effective way to distinguish, visualize, comprehend, and analyze these interleaving design structures. As a result, developers often struggle through the maze of source code. In this paper, we present an \emph{Automated Concept Explanation} (ACE) framework that automatically extracts and categorizes major concepts from source code based on the roles that files play in design structures and their topic frequencies. Based on these categorized concepts, ACE recovers four categories of high-level design models using different algorithms and generates a natural language explanation for each. To assess if and how ACE can help developers better understand design structures, we conducted an empirical study where two groups of graduate students were assigned three design comprehension tasks: identifying feature-related files, identifying dependencies among features, and identifying design patterns used, in an open-source project. The results reveal that the students who used ACE can accomplish these tasks much faster and more accurately, and they acknowledged the usefulness of the categorized concepts and structures, multi-type high-level model visualization, and natural language explanations.
This program is tentative and subject to change.
Thu 16 AprDisplayed time zone: Brasilia, Distrito Federal, Brazil change
14:00 - 15:30 | Architecture and Design 2Research Track / Journal-first Papers / SE in Society (SEIS) at Oceania VIII Chair(s): Davide Taibi University of Southern Denmark and University of Oulu | ||
14:00 15mTalk | Quantum Software Engineering: Roadmap and Challenges Ahead Journal-first Papers Juan Manuel Murillo University of Extremadura and COMPUTAEX Foundation, Jose García-Alonso Universidad de Extremadura, Enrique Moguel University of Extremadura, Johanna Barzen University of Stuttgart, Frank Leymann University of Stuttgart. Institute of Architecture of Application Systems, Shaukat Ali Simula Research Laboratory and Oslo Metropolitan University, Tao Yue Beihang University, Paolo Arcaini National Institute of Informatics, Ricardo Pérez-Castillo University of Castilla-La Mancha, Ignacio García University of Castilla-La Mancha, Mario Piattini University of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain, Antonio Ruiz-Cortés University of Seville, Antonio Brogi Università di Pisa, Jianjun Zhao Kyushu University, Andriy Miranskyy Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson University), Manuel Wimmer JKU Linz Link to publication | ||
14:15 15mTalk | ArchHypo: Managing Software Architecture Uncertainty Using Hypotheses Engineering Journal-first Papers Kelson Silva Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE), Jorge Melegati University of Porto, Fabio Fagundes Silveira Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP), Xiaofeng Wang Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Mauricio Ferreira Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE), Eduardo Guerra Free University of Bozen-Bolzano | ||
14:30 15mTalk | A Holistic Approach to Design Understanding Through Concept Explanation Journal-first Papers Hongzhou Fang Drexel University, Yuanfang Cai Drexel University, Ewan Tempero The University of Auckland, Rick Kazman University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, Yu-ChengTu University of Auckland, Jason Lefever Drexel University, Ernst Pisch Drexel University | ||
14:45 15mTalk | SSAR: A Novel Software Architecture Recovery Approach Enhancing Accuracy and Scalability Research Track Wei Ding Central China Normal University, Ran Mo Central China Normal University, Chaochao Wu Central China Normal University, Haopeng Song Central China Normal University | ||
15:00 15mTalk | Semantic-Enhanced Automatic Refinement of Architecture Recovery Results Using LLMs Research Track Yiran Zhang , Chengwei Liu Nankai University, Yuqiang Sun Nanyang Technological University, Zhengzi Xu Imperial Global Singapore, Weisong Sun Nanyang Technological University, Wenke Li Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuxia Jin Xi'an Jiaotong University, Yang Liu Nanyang Technological University | ||
15:15 15mTalk | Technohealth: A Modular Framework for Reproducible Research in Precision Healthcare with Heterogeneous Wearable Data SE in Society (SEIS) Paula Lago Concordia University, Melika Seyedi Concordia University, Canada, Laurie Anne Laberge Concordia University, Canada, Abdelwahab Hamou-Lhadj Concordia University, Montreal, Canada | ||