| dc.description.abstract | Researchers and practitioners have put a lot of
attention in the visualization of software quality
metrics. However, there is little attempt to
systematically review and classify the different
approaches of the quality metrics. Our objective
in this study is to conduct a systematic literature
review to identify the types and purposes for
visualizing software quality metrics, including
an analysis of existing visual attributes,
interaction mechanisms and the different types
of evaluations that are performed on the
visualizations. We use a thematic analysis on 18
studies that met our inclusion criteria and found
out that graph-based visualization is the most
commonly used to visualize quality metrics
such as lines of code, McCabe’s complexity and
the number of methods. These metrics are
mapped to the visual aspect of dimension, such
as length, width, height and depth of the visual
data, for instance, 3D boxes. In addition, we
found out that the main purpose of employing
visualization techniques is to improve the
understanding of the structural characteristics of
a software entity. | sv |
