A cognitively informed approach to describing product lines in UML

This paper applies a body of theoretical (though practically motivated and validated) work on the cognitive and semantic aspects of diagrammatic notations to the very practical problem of describing product line architectures and products based on them in UML, the industry standard modelling language. We briefly analyse the tasks that a suitable notation must support; justify using UML as a basis and discuss deviations from it; discuss issues in the light of their different semantic and cognitive characteristics; and propose a notation. 1 Introduction As the explicit use of product linescollections of products based on a common product line architectureis increasingly recognised as a means of achieving business benefits, it becomes increasingly evident that tool support for the associated design activities is required. Just as we need to be able to record the design decisions made in the production of an individual product, we need to be able to record the decisions embodied in a pro..