INTRODUCTION
When the British started exploring its own country and the world, the map became more accurate with specific detail. In 18th century, it is very interesting that the map was characterized into different types based scientific research. In order to show the progress of map development from the 16th century to the 18th century, the timeline is the best information visualization method to display.
TOOL AND MATERIALS
The TimelineJS was the tool I used to create the timeline for this lab report. It is a web-based open-source tool that uses a Google sheet to create a basic interactive timeline. In this timeline, the users will be able to view the different type of maps with the most significant changes were developed between 16th century and 18th century. The link of the TimelineJS is http://timeline.knightlab.com/. The data of the timeline is from a website called History of Infographics – Info We Trust and its link is https://infowetrust.com/scroll/.
DATA ENTRY AND VISUALIZATION
As I mentioned, the Timeline JS uses Google sheet to collect and display data. The metadata I used included Year, headline, text, media, media credit, media caption, and media thumbnail. After entering the data, the URL of the google sheet is copied and pasted into TimelineJS website to generate the timeline and prereview it. After reviewing the timeline, I noticed a few of the events were overlapped. To avoid misleading information, I decided to remove a few events and only keep those have the most significant change and impact.
The link to my timeline: https://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/timeline3/latest/embed/index.html?source=1eDx7SFOAvc8gF9gYfPOAiBSfDLJ0aHjD-_hfCdk3H9g&font=Default&lang=en&initial_zoom=2&height=650
REFLECTION
The timeline is a very effective tool to use for displaying events and the TimelineJS is also a very simple tool to use. The TimelineJS also allows the user to customize the timeline. I prefer a simple and clear design to make sure the content is readable and understandable, so I did not make any changes and just kept it white and clean. However, it can also be complicated to create a timeline when the volume of data is big. I realize we don’t want any information is missed and hidden, such as overlapping, huge block text, etc. Therefore, it needs to be careful to choose what kind of metadata we need to display to the user and make sure they are able to understand and view all the data at the same time.