Feb 7 th 2001CMSC 838B: Information Visualization Lifelines: Visualizing Personal Histories C. Plaisant, B.Milash, A. Rose, W.Widoff and B. Shneiderman ACM CHI ’96 Presented by: Kartik C. Parija University of Maryland

Feb 7 th 2001CMSC 838B: Information Visualization Description Introduces Lifelines as general visualization environment for personal histories Medical and Court Records Professional Histories Various types of Biographical Data Provides various examples of applications where records of personal histories are needed Use of graphical time scales as an approach to visualize histories. [Time Scale + History = Intuitive]

Feb 7 th 2001CMSC 838B: Information Visualization Description Use of graphical time scales as an approach to visualize histories. [Time Scale + History = Intuitive]

Feb 7 th 2001CMSC 838B: Information Visualization Description (Cont’d) Emphasis on a one screen overview showing multiple facets of the records Aspects with varying status are displayed as horizontal lines, while icons indicate discrete events. Line color and thickness illustrate relationships or the significance of events. Two Projects using Lifelines are covered in depth: Records of the MD Department of Juvenile Justice Viewing Medical Records Video is worth a thousand Screen-dumps!

Feb 7 th 2001CMSC 838B: Information Visualization Description (Cont’d) - DJJ

Feb 7 th 2001CMSC 838B: Information Visualization Description (Cont’d) - DJJ

Feb 7 th 2001CMSC 838B: Information Visualization Description (Cont’d) – Patient Records

Feb 7 th 2001CMSC 838B: Information Visualization Description (Cont’d) – Patient Records

Feb 7 th 2001CMSC 838B: Information Visualization Description (Cont’d) – Patient Records

Feb 7 th 2001CMSC 838B: Information Visualization Description (Cont’d) Demos:

Feb 7 th 2001CMSC 838B: Information Visualization Description (Cont’d) - Experiment Most users were very enthusiastic about the interface Importance of the overview Ease of access to details Some were concerned about possible bias associated with the color and thickness coding Recommendations made: Ability to show future events The need to be able to see exact dates Marking of informal groups of related events

Feb 7 th 2001CMSC 838B: Information Visualization Description (Cont’d) - Experiment

Feb 7 th 2001CMSC 838B: Information Visualization Description (Cont’d) – Merits/Demerits Advantages: Reduce the chances of missing information Facilitate the spotting of trends and anomalies Streamline the access to details Remain simple and tailorable to various applications Disadvantages: Limitations in record keeping can hamper effectiveness Agreement on a data encoding scheme is difficult Icons, color and thickness codes have to be chosen carefully Development issues Appropriate labeling of timelines – hard to optimize Achieving smooth rescaling

Feb 7 th 2001CMSC 838B: Information Visualization Contributions Made a great case for necessity of appropriate visualization and navigation techniques to present and explore personal history records Using previous ideas, “theoretical results”, intuition and software tools, produced LifeLines which seems a good starting point toward a standard personal history format Provided 2 concrete real-world improvements to existing systems: DJJ and Medical Records An Experiment was conducted which proved its effectiveness and identified some problem areas

Feb 7 th 2001CMSC 838B: Information Visualization Notes on the References Clearly Lifelines has used previous work very well. Not just ideas but software too: Semantic Zooming Elastic Windows Treemaps (Hook Tool) Related Work section presents a number of ideas justifying Lifelines approach to various issues

Feb 7 th 2001CMSC 838B: Information Visualization Critique Overall, I liked the paper: Introduced the ideas Sold me on its importance Presented a product that mostly achieved what I thought it should have A nice mix of published theories, intuition and software implementation Admitted to its limitations and concluded by claming that the effort was a good starting point, which I think it is. The experiment section was very interesting especially as there were so many recommendations made. So a more statistical representation (atleast a table or a chart) may have strengthened the section A reference to a paper that has covered the statistics of the experiment(s)?

Feb 7 th 2001CMSC 838B: Information Visualization What has happened to LifeLines? One of the HCIL Licensed Products More work on using Lifelines for visualizing patient records Enhanced Navigation Analysis More from the author a little later. One more Video?

Feb 7 th 2001CMSC 838B: Information Visualization Favorite Sentence This task alone should be worth 20% of the Grade! Forced to use “Academy Awards” type strategy: Read and re-read paper … then read some more! Come up with a nominations list Pick a winner So the nominees for “Favorite Sentence” are: ………

Feb 7 th 2001CMSC 838B: Information Visualization Favorite Sentence: The Nominations “Decision making critically depends on gleaning the complete story, spotting trends, noting critical incidents or cause-effect relations, and reviewing previous actions.” “Most importantly, large data sets can be displayed along the time line to help relate a story.” “Lifelines offer and effective visualization tool, but reality often thwarts complete and immaculate record keeping.” “Finally, techniques have been described to handle large records and to facilitate the associated window management, making LifeLines a useful starting point toward a standard personal history format.”

Feb 7 th 2001CMSC 838B: Information Visualization Favorite Sentence: The Winner And my Favorite Sentence is: *drumroll* “Most importantly, large data sets can be displayed along the time line to help relate a story.” Justification: Talks about LifeLines and its usefulness It is really hard to relate a story (in general) and with large data sets it gets close to impossible Story telling is very dear to the HCIL spirit!