Interactive Information Visualization Active Research Assignment

http://www.dipity.com/227pam/personal

Glee Episode Guide Timeline on Dipity.

I think that the Dipity software was kind of slow but it was very basic. However once you get the hang of it, it is pretty simple to use. I like the features that allow you to link your timelines to various blogs and social networking sites so that you are able to share what you make beyond just the site. It allows you to embed it in other sites as well. The navigation is not as smooth but the formatting of it is similar to google maps where on the upper left corner you get to zoom in and out if you want the time line to be narrower or wider in terms of gap time. I do like the option where once you store in the information, you can switch your timeline and it can be a flipbook, list, or map to see which way your information works best. It would be nice if users had more control in terms of designing the look of the timeline (besides selecting from the free and premium templates). I would also recommend the designers to enable a feature where you can play the videos in thumbnail forms instead of having to click it and open a new window. Another thing I would like to see in there is an option where when you mouse over a thumbnail, it won't just highlight it but it will also enlarge because there are events that do overlap and it can be easily overlooked. At the bottom of the timelines, there are these tiny little crosses that allow you to zoom in each one, but it is easily overlooked, and just by looking at them, you have no clue what they are there for until you actually click them (you can't even tell which cross will zoom in on which event). The positioning of the events and the sizes also establish this unintentional hierarchy which might make the viewer assume that the top most and largest event thumbs are the most relevant when that is not necessarily the case but due to linear sequence of events.

For various fields I think that Dipity would work best for education so that learning topics in sequence with a variety of interactive options such as clicking other links, watching videos, seeing pictures makes an interactive timeline like this capture more attention and interest. This would also be good for business such as big corporations with a lot of history which have various forms of media such as commercials, print ads, products which you can all include in the timeline.