Usability of use case creation

General Questions/Discussions
1

Just downloaded the ‘community’ edition and am using it as a demo.

I was excited to see a tool that let you both model and create use case text. Very nice feature.

Issue I have is the usability of features. So far, I’ve used the product 15 minutes and I am trying to work through the construction of a use case.

The use case description window opens VERY small… too small to be of value. Then, when the window is resized (note painfully obvious lack of ‘full screen’ option on the window bar), the internal grid stays the same size. So after painfully resizing the window, I have to painfully resize the internals of the grid.

Next problem. When entering the ‘flow of events’, I cannot see more than one line of text in the grid. Anything longer than a short sentence, is all the grid will display. The grid should auto wrap and auto-expand. Come on guys… what good it this as a tool, if I have to click in each grid cell and scroll along to see what is typed?

Another feature I can see missing is the ability to group use cases. Typically use case diagrams will be grouped by department, actor, etc. While, the existing functionality is ‘useful’, the ability to group diagrams in meaningful folders would help large projects.

The program also seems to have issue with display. The screen periodically takes seconds to re-display. The first time I saved and opened a ‘project’, all the use cases and actors got stuck up in the top-left corner of the screen. Working with the tool more, I keep seeing lags in the display/redraw.

I’ve seen enough. You have what looks to be a well thought out tool but it requires bug fixing and some ‘usability’ review.

I am excited to see the beta version of the .net integration. Looks like an excellent tool, however I am leary, after using this community version. I’ll check back in six months and see if the product gets any better.

James Duncan

2

"The use case description window opens VERY small… too small to be of value. Then, when the window is resized (note painfully obvious lack of ‘full screen’ option on the window bar), the internal grid stays the same size. So after painfully resizing the window, I have to painfully resize the internals of the grid. "

Thanks for your comment, we are looking into this. Funnily, the linux version has a maximize button, however it does not maximize the grid.

“Next problem. When entering the ‘flow of events’, I cannot see more than one line of text in the grid. Anything longer than a short sentence, is all the grid will display. The grid should auto wrap and auto-expand. Come on guys… what good it this as a tool, if I have to click in each grid cell and scroll along to see what is typed?”

Yet again, thanks for your helpful suggestion and we shall include this in the next revision of VP-UML.

“Another feature I can see missing is the ability to group use cases. Typically use case diagrams will be grouped by department, actor, etc. While, the existing functionality is ‘useful’, the ability to group diagrams in meaningful folders would help large projects.”

You can use a package to group the use cases.

“The program also seems to have issue with display. The screen periodically takes seconds to re-display. The first time I saved and opened a ‘project’, all the use cases and actors got stuck up in the top-left corner of the screen. Working with the tool more, I keep seeing lags in the display/redraw.”

Could you give us the specifications of your machine?

Thanks for your suggestsions James. We hope to make more improvements in the next release.

Martyn

3

Machine is an AMD Athlon XP 2000+, 256 megs of memory, running Windows 2000 Professional Service Pack 4. Video card is a Radeon 9200 series, which share a meager 32 meg of system memory. I imagine a better video card would help.

I’ve seen poor drawing like this on the Pseiodon branch of this code, on a different machine. The refresh may be something related to the base code or may be related to Java itself. Java version is the runtime, standard edition, 1.4.2_02-b03.

I will say this is a much better UML modellign tool than Pseiodon. Good job.

James

4

James:
Thanks for your supporting, we will do our best for users.
Your refresh problem may be coused by Java run-time, and there is an attachment that help you to fix this problem. Please place the bat file to your installation directory of VP-UML and execute it. I hope it will help you.
whitehole
testrun.bat.txt

5

James:
Sorry for the problem of previous post. Please chagne the file name of the attachment form “testrun.bat.txt” to “testrun.bat”.
whitehole

6

Hi James,

I have not noticed any zoom out problems as you have mentioned. The button is disabled when it hits 10% - so any mouse clicks should not be registered. I will investigate on it further on a windows machine (i cannot replicate your problem in linux).

Thanks for notifying us. I shall get back to you soon.

Martyn

7

Thank you. I tried the attached .bat file and it appears to have fixed the refresh issues. I have used it for about 30 minutes now without any issues. Concider the problem fixed and if I ever see it again, I’ll let you know.

One problem I noticed is with the ‘zoom out’. When I zoom out, I quickly quick the zoom out button as far as it will go. If I click it too many times, the zoom in button doesn’t appear to respond. I did a bit of testing and found that it does respond but will sometimes take up to 5 clicks. I believe the ‘zoom out’ button, if clicked too many times, will count down to 0%, then the ‘zoom in’ button must count up to 50% (5 clicks) before it responds and starts visually zooming in.

James

8

Could this be a limitation of the community edition? Steps I take to recreate the problem are:

  1. I create a new project and immediately add a new use case diagram.
  2. add a package
  3. Add a use case
  4. Add an actor
  5. Click the zoom in button.

Using the zoom in button, the screen will only zoom in to 50%. At that point the combobox also says 50%. If I zoom in more, the screen doesn’t zoom and the combobox stays at 50%. I have, on the odd occasion, managed to zoom in past 50% but I cannot recreate the behaviour that allows it.

I am also finding that, if I minimize the application and then maximize it, the screen does not refresh. The application comes up as a big gray box. This happens with and without the patch provided. Mousing over the buttons, menus, etc, will cause them to redraw.

James

9

James,

I don’t understand - when I start a new Use Case diagram, the zoom should already be set at 100% I’m not sure how you can “zoom in” to 50%. Unless you have zoomed out to 10% first?

Martyn

10

I have the terms zoom in and zoom out backwards.

11

Hi James,

I could not replicate the zoom in/out error that you are experiencing (in either Linux or Windows). This is our first report on the zooming feature, however, it will still remain on look out if it occurs again.

If you can replicate the problem, could you attach a screenshot of the error? Alternatively, there is a Feedback section in the “Tools” menu allowing you to send a certain section of your project so we can have a further look.

Thanks.

Martyn