Visualizing time-oriented data - A systematic view

The analysis of time-oriented data is an important task in many application scenarios. In recent years, a variety of techniques for visualizing such data have been published. This variety makes it difficult for prospective users to select methods or tools that are useful for their particular task at hand. In this article, we develop and discuss a systematic view on the diversity of methods for visualizing time-oriented data. With the proposed categorization we try to untangle the visualization of time-oriented data, which is such an important concern in Visual Analytics. The categorization is not only helpful for users, but also for researchers to identify future tasks in Visual Analytics.