Comparing static Gantt and mosaic charts for visualization of task schedules

Saturnino Luz, Masoodian [Unknown]

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract / Description of output

A mosaic chart has been proposed for representation of events on a timeline. While early studies demonstrated the effectiveness of mosaics in supporting visualization of multimedia records on a meeting browser, the usability of mosaics as a static timeline visualization has not been studied in more general settings. This paper investigates the use of the mosaic charts for visualization of project schedules. A user study was conducted to compare a building project schedule encoded alternatively as a mosaic or as a Gantt chart. Although the study focused on static graphs, for which the Gantt technique is usually very effective, results showed that the users were as fast and accurate at answering the questions using the mosaic representation as they were using Gantt charts. The analysis and experiment indicated algorithmic, space-filling and interpretation limitations of the mosaic technique. We suggest possible design improvements to overcome some of these limitations.
Original languageUndefined/Unknown
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 15th International Conference on Information Visualisation, IV'11
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Pages182-187
Number of pages6
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 30 Aug 2011

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