PlanningLines: Novel glyphs for representing temporal uncertainties and their evaluation

Dealing with temporal uncertainties is a key issue in domains like project management or medical treatment planning. However, support for temporal indeterminacies is not very well integrated in current methods, techniques, and tools. In this paper we present a visualization technique called PlanningLines that allows for representing temporal uncertainties and aims at supporting project managers in their difficult planning and controlling tasks. We conducted a controlled experiment to gather empirical evidence on the strengths and limitations of our approach. Main results are that PlanningLine users make fewer mistakes and are faster in conducting tasks than users of a traditional visualization technique.