Timelines as interfaces to information systems.

摘要

Timelines or timecharts are a common paradigm for historical information displays. Graphical presentation of events and relationships as found in knowledge-rich domains presents a challenging task for an interface developer. Interactive timelines afford their use as intuitive and flexible interfaces to such large bodies of abstract information.;In this dissertation, we explore the efficacy of timeline interfaces. We present two taxonomies, one characterizing the content and another characterizing the presentation of timelines. An effort is made to define mappings from content to presentation. Availability of such mappings helps one generate interfaces for specific content bases.;We present a model of timelines with the goal of describing generalized timeline displays. The model is a key part of our Interactive Timeline Editing and Review (ITER) framework. The framework provides a way for users to manipulate timelines.;A prototype application based on the framework was developed. We conducted a usability study on the prototype for the purpose of evaluating the model. The result shows that timeline interfaces are useful for visualizing the inter-relationships among events. By enabling users to display attributes and relationships flexibly, timeline interfaces encourage users to make and visually test hypotheses.