Code Park: A New 3D Code Visualization Tool

Keywords

3D interface; code visualization; software visualization

Abstract

We introduce Code Park, a novel tool for visualizing codebases in a 3D game-like environment. Code Park aims to improve a programmer's understanding of an existing codebase in a manner that is both engaging and intuitive, appealing to novice users such as students. It achieves these goals by laying out the codebase in a 3D park-like environment. Each class in the codebase is represented as a 3D room-like structure. Constituent parts of the class (variable, member functions, etc.) are laid out on the walls, resembling a syntax-aware 'wallpaper'. The users can interact with the codebase using an overview, and a first-person viewer mode. We conducted two user studies to evaluate Code Park's usability and suitability for organizing an existing project. Our results indicate that Code Park is easy to get familiar with and significantly helps in code understanding compared to a traditional IDE. Further, the users unanimously believed that Code Park was a fun tool to work with.

Publication Date

10-31-2017

Publication Title

Proceedings - 2017 IEEE Working Conference on Software Visualization, VISSOFT 2017

Volume

2017-October

Number of Pages

43-53

Document Type

Article; Proceedings Paper

Personal Identifier

scopus

DOI Link

https://doi.org/10.1109/VISSOFT.2017.10

Socpus ID

85047220300 (Scopus)

Source API URL

https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/85047220300

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