Measuring the complexity of computer security visualization designs

Abstract

We present a novel method to measure the complexity of computer security visualization designs. The complexity is measured in terms of visual integration, number of separable dimensions for each visual unit, the complexity of interpreting the visual attributes, and the efficiency of visual search. Visualization developers can use this method to quickly evaluate multiple design choices in the early stage of their design before any user study can be conducted. To demonstrate this method, we have conducted complexity analysis on two open source security visualization tools - TNV and RUMINT. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.