SEQUAL Framework - SEQUAL Framework Topics - Empirical Quality

Empirical Quality

To evaluate empirical quality, the model should be well externalized. Main aspects are:

  • Ergonomics,
  • readability,
  • layout, and
  • information theory.

Basically empirical quality is about the question "Is the model easily readable?". Empirical quality deals with the variety of elements distinguished, error frequencies when being written or read, coding (shapes of boxes) and ergonomics for Computer-Human Interaction for documentation and modeling-tools. Ergonomics is the study of workplace design and the physical and psychological impact it has on workers. This quality is related to readability and layout. There are different factors that have an important impact on visual emphasis like size, solidity, foreground/background differences, colour (red attracts the eye more than other colours),change(blinking or moving symbols attract attention), position and so on.

For graph aesthetics there may be different consideration(Battista, 1994, Tamassia, 1988) like angles between edges not be too small, minimize the number of bends along edges, minimize the number of crossings between edges, place nodes with high degree in the centre of the drawing, have symmetry of sons in hierarchies, have uniform density of nodes in the drawing, have verticality of hierarchical structures and so on.

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