{AsbruView: Capturing Complex, Time-oriented Plans - Beyond Flow-Charts}

Flow-charts are one of the standard means of represent- ing actions or algorithms in many domains. However, applying ow-charts in dynamically changing environ- ments, like clinical treatment planning, reveals their limitations. Flow-charts do not include the tempo- ral dimension in their design, do not allow complex paths through many components, and scale very badly. These are only some of the requirements for a means of communicating clinical therapy plans. As an alterna- tive, a plan-representation language called Asbru was designed, that overcomes all the limitations of ow- charts. It is, however, impossible for a domain expert to work with Asbru directly. Therefore, a visualization is presented here, called AsbruView, which uses three- dimensional diagrams and metaphors | running tracks and trac signs | to make the parts of Asbru easily understandable and usable. Even very complex clinical plans are easy to survey with AsbruView