Towards a Concept how the Structure of Time can Support the Visual Analytics Process

Abstract

The primary goal of Visual Analytics (VA) is the close intertwinedness of human reasoning and automated methods. An important task for this goal is formulating a description for such a VA process. We propose the design of a VA process description that uses the inherent structure contained in time-oriented data as a way to improve the integration of human reasoning. This structure can, for example, be seen in the calendar aspect of time being composed of smaller granularities, like years and seasons. Domain experts strongly consider this structure in their reasoning, so VA needs to consider it, too.