How Engineers Understand Entity-relationship Diagrams: insights from eye tracker data

Abstract

Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD) is one of the main tools used in software design process. This representation enables software engineers to understand system data requirements at a more comprehensive level. Designing and understanding of ERD and hence system data requirements is a critical issue for the success of software projects. In this study we are introducing an experiment environment which would be used to understand the behaviors of software engineers during designing and understanding these representations. This experimental setting is planned to be used to measure the software engineers’ performance during ERD defect detection process. We believe such an environment can be used to develop some reviewing guidelines for the software engineers to improve their reviewing process in ERD which in turn will provide some tools for the educators to improve design and review skills of future software engineers. The results of this study would also provide recommendations for the researchers in similar experiments.