Documentation Generation as Information Visualization
This work addresses usability improvements for developers using API documentation tools, but it is incremental as it builds on existing auto doc practices without introducing a new method.
The paper tackled the problem of inconsistent representations in automatic documentation generation tools by analyzing them through an information visualization lens, proposing design principles to enhance usability for developers searching with partial information.
Automatic documentation generation tools, or auto docs, are widely used to visualize information about APIs. However, each auto doc tool comes with its own unique representation of API information. In this paper, I use an information visualization analysis of auto docs to generate potential design principles for improving their usability. Developers use auto docs as a reference by looking up relevant API primitives given partial information, or leads, about its name, type, or behavior. I discuss how auto docs can better support searching and scanning on these leads, e.g. by providing more information-dense visualizations of method signatures.