Calendar sketch by John Maeda
An interesting example from John Maeda. Applies idea of an "infinite zoom" to a timeline as the viewer can dive seamlessly into a timeline.
I find this an instructive demo into how a seamless interface, which to me promises a consistent sense of orientation and a dynamic quality, can also produce the opposite effect. The fact that looking at years, months, days, seconds in precisely the same way seems to have a "flattening effect" where all time units look the same, and what first seems quite dynamic feels at the end quite static. Also suffers from / enjoys the benefits of being a "content-free" demo; presenting a very elegant solution while avoiding any of the meatier issues that would arise if one were to try to present actual information in this model.
Dynamic Timelines Thesis
Dynamic Timelines:Visualizing Historical Information in Three Dimensions is the title of a masters thesis by Robin Kullberg. Robin wrote this when she was studying under Muriel Cooper at the MIT Media Lab's old design group, the Visible Language Workshop, or VLW. What I particularly like about this work, and other work from the VLW at this time (around 1996), is it's way of using 3D. Coming from a background of print media, the group was very careful, in Robin's case skeptical, about the use of three dimensional graphics. The group placed a big emphasis on providing seamless user navigation and meaningful context while maintaining legibility and avoiding disorientation.
NEW: a very informative demo video with voice-over from the designer is available online.
Some examples of interactive timelines
www.sbrowning.com/whowhatwhen/
Very straightforward; interactivity only through selecting different parameters but funny in it's serious graphics. Obviously American.
www.bbc.co.uk/education/rocks
Nicely done educational timeline. I like the reference to the world map; space and time...
Discovery of Insulin Timeline
This one is technically not very advanced, but I find it interesting to see how a simple line-up of flatscans visualises a development in time of something that is basically quite abstract.
Sniper Time Line
Timeline of an incident. Here as well interesting linking between time and space.
Martha Stewart Timeline
And of another incident...
Memento
Memento is a simple quiz on VRT1 organised around historical facts. Candidates have to guess how these facts would line up, i.e. before or after each other. I like this 'shuffling' with facts and figures -- imagined that there could be dates which are debatable, or people could vote on where to place a certain element on the timeline