Temporal Visualization
Temporal Visualization
visualization techniques
Chaouki Daassi, Laurence Nigay, Marie-Christine Fauvet
Abstract
A wide range of visualization techniques have been designed to
assist users to visually analyze and manipulate temporal data. All the
proposed techniques have been designed independently. In this
context it is therefore difficult to systematically explore the set of
possibilities as well as to thoroughly envision visualization
techniques of temporal data. Addressing this problem, we present a
taxonomy of visualization techniques of temporal data. Based on a
study of thirty-seven visual tools and visualization techniques of
temporal data, our taxonomy structures the design space according
to the Chi's visualization process steps.
Keywords: Visualization Techniques, Temporal Data, Visualization
Process, Taxonomy.
1. INTRODUCTION AND RELATED WORK
An object property is said to be temporal if its successive values are
meaningful and thus recorded. A value of a temporal property is a history
or a set temporal data, e.g. a function from a finite set of instants observed
at a fixed granularity (i.e. a time unit), to a set of values of a given type.
The domain and the range of a history are respectively called its temporal
and structural domain [11]. In the study reported in this paper, we focus
on histories whose structural values are of a quantitative type. Examples
of such history are the salary of an employee or the daily productions of a
firm. In the following, the expressions "temporal data" and "histories" are
considered to have the same meaning.
Many visualization techniques of temporal data have been proposed in
various application domains including the display of clinical data [26],
geographical data [20], hydrometric data [18], personal histories [23], and
for different purposes as for searching trends and patterns [12], exploring
program traces [25], analyzing log data [13], representing temporal
abstractions [27] or visualizing temporal association rules [24]. All the
proposed techniques have been designed independently. Within this
context, it is therefore difficult to compare the existing visualization
techniques and explore new designs. In this paper, we present a
classification space based on the steps of the Chi’s visualization process
to provide a systematic classification process of visualization techniques
of temporal data. The contribution of our classification space is two-fold:
• The ability of our framework to compare/classify existing visualization
techniques has great promise, especially in light of the rapid progress
that we are experiencing in the domain.
• By identifying and organizing the various aspects of visualization, our
framework should also help the designer to address the right design
questions and to envision future visualization techniques of temporal
data.
Few design and classification spaces have been proposed in the
literature. Silva et al. [29] classify the visualization techniques according
to two classes of features: visualization and interaction features.
Visualization features include the data characteristics (e.g. complex
entity, entity-relation, periodic pattern, pattern/trend) and the rendering
(snapshot view, focus+context, multiple calendars, user-defined display).
Interaction features are derived from Shneiderman’s taxonomy of tasks
[28] that is general and not dedicated to interaction with temporal data.
Complementary to this classification scheme, several time-specific
interaction tasks (e.g., merging two timelines in order to obtain a new
one, juxtaposing two timelines) for visualization techniques of temporal
data are proposed in [19]. Another taxonomy of temporal data
visualization techniques is described in [22]. The taxonomy identifies two
classes of visualization techniques: static versus dynamic. A technique is
called dynamic if the associated visual representation is time-dependent,
otherwise it is called static. In static techniques, the visual representation
of objects does not change, unless a modification is required by the user.
By contrast, in dynamic techniques the visual representation of objects
evolves according to the time of modification of their values.
Although these studies identify classes of visualization techniques,
they do not extend enough so as to be used as guidelines during the
design phase. Addressing this issue in the context of data visualization in
general, Chi [3] structures the visualization process into steps described in
section 2, from the data to their rendering. Techniques are then classified
according to the visualization process they implement: Doing so, Chi
shows the similarities and differences between them. However, the Chi's
study does not consider the specific role of time in visualizing temporal
data. In this paper we present a classification scheme of techniques
dedicated to histories (e.g. temporal data) visualization. The classification
criteria are based on the steps of the Chi’s visualization process. To
validate these criteria, we studied thirty-seven tools and techniques
dedicated to temporal data visualization [7]. However, in this paper only a
few of them are used as illustrations.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, we describe
the Chi’s visualization process and in Section 3 we explain how we apply
this process to temporal data. Section 4 introduces our taxonomy of
temporal data visualization techniques. Finally, in section 5, we conclude
and sketch some further studies.
1
One time unit U1 is said to be comparable to another time unit U2, only if each value of
U1 is composed of a fixed number of U2. The time unit U1 is said to be coarser than the
time unit U2, and U2 is finer than U1. A concrete example of regular units is Year (coarser
unit) and Month (finer unit). Each year contains twelve months.
unit coarser than Hour, and comparable with Hour), while the other
represents the hours. In the example of Fig. 2, each time unit is
considered as linear: one time axis is then associated with each of them.
Point of view on the time space. The point of view on the time space
refers to the rendering of the temporal domain of the history to be
visualized. At this step, the perceptible forms of time are implemented.
These forms must be studied according to the human perception of time.
For instance, as pointed out by Tufte [30, p. 186], human eyes are able to
detect deviation of the horizon, making easier the perception and
interpretation of the horizontal representations of temporal data.
The choice of a form is strongly influenced by the point of view on
time that has been adopted (Step 2 “Point of view on time”). Indeed, the
point of view on time identifies the characteristics of the temporal values
to be visualized. For example, a graphical representation of time in a
cyclic form as illustrated by the spiral shown in Fig. 3-a could be used
because the history is observed at a given unit system and could be
viewed as periodic: this characteristic was identified during the step
“Point of view on time”. In Fig. 3-a, the time line is shown as a spiral and
a temporal value corresponds to the intersection between the spiral and
one of the twelve radii (one for each month). Each structural value is
represented by a circle, whose size depends on the value it is associated
with (higher is the value, larger is the circle). Fig. 3-b (a simplified
representation of the TimeSlider technique [16]) illustrates another
representation of time where points of time are distributed irregularly on
an axis in order to render a logarithmic perception of time [5]. Indeed in
Fig. 3-b the time scale is linear at the central part of the timeline and is
based on a uniform time unit (e.g., a day in Fig. 3-b) whereas the time
scale is non-linear (time steps are exponential) at the edges. Finally a
linear representation is another classical way to represent time as depicted
in Fig. 2 where four timelines [10] are used to interact with the time
space: one timeline for each time unit.
Some visualization techniques rely on various forms of time used
simultaneously. For example the Spiral Calendar Visualizer [21] includes
two points of view on time: multi-granular and cyclic. The values of each
time unit are represented as a calendar (multi-granular representation of
time). Thus, years are first represented in a view, then one selected year is
displayed in another view and a month of this year is displayed in another
view and so on. All the views are represented in a spiral form (cyclic
perception of time). Using simultaneously these two forms of time
reinforces the user’s perception of the multi-granular structure of time
while highlighting cycles.
-a- Spiral representation of time [2] -b- TimeSlider [16]
F IG . 3 – Time representations.
Total fusion or fusion at the step “point of view on the data”. Some
visualization techniques of temporal data result from a total fusion of both
visualization processes. We distinguish two cases respectively shown in
Fig. 4-a and Fig. 4-b. The configuration depicted in Fig. 4-a is often used
to visualize data whose temporal domain is implicit: the representation of
time is then implicit. Examples of such histories include videos.
Conversely, the configuration shown in Fig. 4-b is used to visualize
histories whose temporal domain is explicit. Time is then explicit,
enabling the dissociation of the two history domains (i.e. the temporal and
structural domains). Visualization techniques could then be classified
depending on whether the time representation is implicit or explicit.
F IG . 5 – The separation of the two visualization processes after a crossing-
point: No existing visualization technique corresponds to this configuration.
F IG . 10 – TimeVis technique.
6. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The work presented in the article is partly funded by the multidisciplinary
French project NAVGRAPHE (as part of a national research program on
large data sets). Many thanks to G. Serghiou for reviewing the paper.
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