Chronos: A tool for interactive scheduling and visualisation of task hierarchies

Saturnino Luz*, Masood Masoodian, Daniel McKenzie, Wim Vanden Broeck

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter (peer-reviewed)peer-review

Abstract

Visualisation and structuring of tasks in a schedule, from relatively simple activities such as meeting scheduling to more complex ones such as project planning, has been traditionally supported by timeline representations similar to Gantt charts. Despite their popularity, Gantt charts suffer from a number of shortcomings, including poor representation of detail and inefficient use of screen real-estate, particularly when a large number of parallel tasks, each of which requiring its own representation space, need to be displayed. We have devised an alternative visualisation, called temporal mosaic, which addresses some of these shortcomings while utilising space more efficiently. We have recently shown that as a static visualisation temporal mosaics outperform Gantt charts in terms of their ability to convey time-based scheduling information to users engaged in various temporal inference tasks. This paper extends that research by presenting interactive techniques which support creation, and dynamic visualisation of task hierarchies and relationships. These techniques are illustrated through a system for direct manipulation of schedules in both Gantt chart and temporal mosaic formats.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationInformation Visualization
Pages241-246
Number of pages6
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 4 Aug 2009
Event2009 13th International Conference on Information Visualisation, IV 2009 - Barcelona, Spain
Duration: 15 Jul 200917 Jul 2009

Publication series

NameProceedings of the International Conference on Information Visualisation
ISSN (Print)1093-9547

Conference

Conference2009 13th International Conference on Information Visualisation, IV 2009
Country/TerritorySpain
CityBarcelona
Period15/07/0917/07/09

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Chronos: A tool for interactive scheduling and visualisation of task hierarchies'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this