Mental imagery in program design and visual programming

There is widespread anecdotal evidence that expert programmers make use of visual mental images when they are designing programs. This evidence is use d to justify the use of diagrams and visual programming languages during so ftware design. This paper reports the results of two studies. In the first, expert programmers were directly questioned regarding the nature of their mental representations while they were engaged in a design task. This inves tigative technique was used with the explicit intention of eliciting intros pective reports of mental imagery. In the second, users of a visual program ming language responded to a questionnaire in which they were asked about c ognitive processes. The resulting transcripts displayed a considerable numb er of common elements. These suggests that software design shares many char acteristics of more concrete design disciplines. The reports from participa nts in the two studies, together with previous research into imagery use, i ndicate potential techniques for further investigation of software developm ent support tools and design strategies. (C) 1999 Academic Press.