How we see time – the evolution and current state of visualizations of temporal data

ABSTRACT Time, much like space, has always influenced the human experience due to its ubiquity. Yet, how we have communicated temporal information graphically throughout our history, is still inadequately studied. How does our image of time and temporal events evolve as the human world continuously transforms into a globally more and more synchronized community? Within this overview paper, we elaborate on these questions, we analyze visualizations of time and temporal data from a variety of sources connected to exploratory data analysis. We assign codes and cluster the visualizations based on their graphical properties. The result gives an overview of different visual structures apparent in graphic representations of time.