Project Abstract

This project focuses on two areas of computing, Data Visualisation and Information Presentation. More specifically, the utilisation of timelines in these areas. Timelines are an extremely useful tool for displaying temporal data in a succinct, yet visually appealing manner. Despite this, they are often overlooked in favour of other methods of visualising data. I believe this is primarily due to a lack of high-quality tools available to the public for creating timelines. This project aimed to rectify this issue through the creation of a free, publicly available web application with the express purpose of helping users create visually appealing timelines in an intuitive way. To achieve this, I employed an Agile-based development methodology to create a fully functioning web application using the Laravel framework. The application included what I believed to be several essential features for not just a timeline tool, but any data presentation tool in general. These included, filtering, searching, bookmarking, in-app reminders and more. The project also has a large focus on education as I believe this to be one of the most underexplored areas of information presentation and was thus developed with not only industry professionals, but also educators in mind. One example of this is the ability to publish timelines so that they can be viewed by other users. This is particularly useful in an educational environment as it allows educators to publish materials so that their students can access them without any hassle. Overall, this project seeks to capitalise on the underutilisation of timelines in data visualisation and information presentation by providing an easy-to-use, high-quality web tool for timeline creation.

Keywords: Timeline, Visualisation, Education

 Conference Details

Session: B

Location: Sir Stanley Clarke Auditorium at 13:30 15:30

Markers: Troy Astarte, Nicholas Micallef

Course: BSc Computer Science 3yr FT

Future Plans: I’m looking for work