Viewing personal history records: A comparison of tabular format and graphical presentation using LifeLines

Author/Creator ORCID

Date

2010-11-08

Department

Program

Citation of Original Publication

Diane Lindwarm Alonso, Anne Rose, Catherine Plaisant & Kent L. Norman (1998) Viewing personal history records: A comparison of tabular format and graphical presentation using LifeLines, Behaviour & Information Technology, 17:5, 249-262, DOI: 10.1080/014492998119328

Rights

This is the submitted manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Behaviour & Information Technology on 8 Nov 2010, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/014492998119328.

Subjects

Abstract

Thirty-six participants used a static version of either LifeLines, a graphical interface, or a Tabular representation to answer questions about a database of temporal personal history information. Results suggest that overall the LifeLines representation led to much faster response times, primarily for questions which involved interval comparisons and making intercategorical connections. A “first impression” test showed that LifeLines can reduce some of the biases of the tabular record summary. A post-experimental memory test led to significantly (p<.004) higher recall for LifeLines. Finally, simple interaction techniques are proposed to compensate for the problems of the static LifeLines display’s ability to deal with precise dates, attribute coding and overlaps.