Design Thinking Research by Hasso Plattner Christoph Meinel & Larry Leifer

Author:Hasso Plattner, Christoph Meinel & Larry Leifer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

2.2 Tool Mechanics

In this report, we focus on graphical tools for programming. These are tools that have windows, buttons, lists, text fields, or other kinds of interactive widgets. We think that programmers can benefit from graphics-based interfaces in terms of increased information density and convenient input methods such as mouse and touch. Text-based interfaces, for example command lines, are still popular in several communities and maybe one indication for inconvenient designs in the graphical world. However, this is precisely where programmers can take the opportunity to tailor their tools as needed. This can work if the mechanics of the underlying tool-building framework are comprehensive and easy to apply.

There are many ways to model the structure of programming tools. We think that it is useful to distinguish between the data that is accessed and the visuals that are produced as depicted in Fig. 2. For tool builders, a query language is used to access the data. For tool users, a presentation language has to be learned to make sense of the visuals. Usually, there is also a mapping language because many software artifacts do not have an inherent graphical representation and hence have to be mapped to the graphical properties of standard widgets such as scrollable lists or text boxes.

Fig. 2Graphical tools for programming query system data to retrieve software artifacts such as source code, external documentation, and run-time traces. A subset of the artifacts’ information is extracted and mapped to what interactive widgets support such as textual labels and color properties. The tool’s source code is basically an adapter between databases and widgets

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