Black-Box Testing Technique for Information Visualization. Sequencing Constraints with Low-Level Interactions

Abstract

The software development process has matured significantly over the past decade. We are currently in a state where the need for the verification and validation of the product under development is unquestionable. Visualizations, as software products, must go through such verification and validation control. At the implementation level, a visualization software is no different from any other software, its source code can be verified and validated by using any available white-box technique. The usability studies and controlled experiments are helpful to understand how the user perceives and uses the visualization. However, at an interaction level, a visualization software is not like any other software. Most interactions on a traditional software, are based on buttons and text fields while on a visualization, the interactions are mostly based on zooming, selecting and filtering visual elements. The black-box techniques found in the literature, also known as functional tests, are not suitable for this context. This paper describes a black-box technique tailored for information visualization implementations. The technique is built on constraints imposed over the sequences of low-level interactions available in the visualization and the User Action Notation.