Visualization Channels: Time Multiplexing on a Display

Large and complex information requires arbitrarily extensive displays for an exact, comprehensive visualization. This paper introduces a technique, time-multiplexing, for presenting such information that concentrates on the efficient management of time for a typical display. Timemultiplexing complements classical approaches, which are graphics oriented and make use of spatial and perceptual features of the display to convey a view of the data at various levels of complexity. Time multiplexing offers a live virtual tour of the important aspects of the information by continuously iterating though a set of “interesting” visualizations. The interestingness of the views is periodically approximated to ensure that they conform to the user’s shifting intentions and to the underlying changing information. Techniques to correlate different presentations timelines to improve the effectiveness of time-multiplexing visualization are discussed.