The causal chains between events should be displayed (eg.It should be easy to work on small sections of the timeline at once, without getting swamped with details from all the other events, entities, and story-arcs.The relationship between the different story-arc threads should be clear at all times: at times they will split and merge, there may be events shared between different story-arcs, etc.The division of events between story-arcs should be easily visible and understood.Events with a duration must have that duration visible and accurate in the timeline.Events must be displayed at their correct temporal location in the timeline.Although this is an incomplete list, some of the constraints and properties we would want it to meet include: The ideal timeline: some notes and constraintsĪn ideal timeline would capture the maximum amount of data in the minimum space required (computer people call this entropy). Feedback at this design stage is crucial, as it will become increasingly difficult to make large changes as we move towards implementation. Continue reading (click on the more link), if you want to see my current thoughts and sketches, and provide feedback and further ideas/suggestions. In the remainder of this post, I discuss the difficult task of displaying this additional information. Provide an intuitive and interactive means to manipulate the additional information made available by this new view.Express the temporal and causal links between events.Divide events into separate story-arcs/timelines that split and merge throughout the timeline as groups of people are separated and reunited.Combined with filtering by Entity, this will make it much easier to check that someone isn’t in two places at once, for instance. Events will be displayed at their exact location on the timeline, rather than pushed around to create sufficient space between each event.Create a view that does not have the Entity lines – this allows a lot more space and freedom.
If you fit this category, the bullet points below list what we are trying to achieve. I say this as a warning for people who just want to check out the application, and the general direction it is taking. This is a rather long post (there are some pictures, at least).
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