VISSOFT Most Influential Paper Award 2026 — Ten Years of Actionable Visualisation

September 15, 2026 — Benevento, Italy VISSOFT 2026 MIP Award Best Paper

At VISSOFT 2026 — the 14th IEEE Working Conference on Software Visualization, held in Benevento, Italy (September 14–15, 2026) — the paper "Towards Actionable Visualisation in Software Development" received the Most Influential Paper (MIP) Award. The award was presented to co-authors Leonel Merino, Mohammad Ghafari, and Oscar Nierstrasz by MIP co-chairs Johan Fabry and Wilhelm Hasselbring.

MIP award ceremony at VISSOFT 2026: from left to right, Takashi Ishio, Oscar Nierstrasz, and David Moreno — MIP Award ceremony at VISSOFT 2026, Benevento, Italy, September 15, 2026. Left to right: Takashi Ishio (General Co-Chair), Oscar Nierstrasz (co-author), David Moreno (General Co-Chair). The VISSOFT 2026 Most Influential Paper Award diploma is visible on the projection screen.

The Original Paper (VISSOFT 2016)

The original paper was published at VISSOFT 2016 (4th IEEE Working Conference on Software Visualization, Raleigh, NC, USA, October 3–4, 2016), where it also received the Best Paper Award. The paper reviewed 346 papers published at SOFTVIS/VISSOFT venues and identified 65 design study papers describing how visualisation is applied to address difficulties in software development. It classified them into problem domains, exposed mismatches between practitioner needs and research focus, and called for a more actionable approach to software visualisation.

VISSOFT 2016 Best Paper Award diploma awarded to Leonel Merino, Mohammad Ghafari and Oscar Nierstrasz — VISSOFT 2016 Best Paper Award diploma, presented at the 4th IEEE Working Conference on Software Visualization, Raleigh, NC, USA — October 3–4, 2016.

Original paper — VISSOFT 2016 (PDF)

Invited Journal Extension

Following the Best Paper Award, the authors were invited to submit an extended version to a special issue of the Journal of Software: Evolution and Process dedicated to VISSOFT 2016. The extended paper, "Towards Actionable Visualization for Software Developers", broadened the survey to 86 design studies across 368 SOFTVIS/VISSOFT papers, adding resource requirements and utility evidence to the characterization framework.

Extended journal version — postprint (PDF)

Ten Years Later — VISSOFT 2026

At VISSOFT 2026, alongside receiving the MIP Award, the authors presented a follow-up paper revisiting the 2016 findings in the light of a decade of change: "Towards Actionable Visualization: Ten Years Later, What Generative AI Changes and What It Cannot". The paper revisits the original assumptions and taxonomy, finding that generative AI has fundamentally changed the economics of visualization production — making the 2016 premise of a matching bottleneck largely obsolete — while arguing that the human work of perceiving, judging, and directing visualizations becomes more important, not less. It calls for a research agenda centered on human perceptual and evaluative capacity, and confronts the risks that follow from AI-generated visualizations competing with human interpretation.

Ten Years Later — VISSOFT 2026 (PDF)