We hear a lot about data visualization, which focuses on presenting a lot of data in a way which is easy to understand and aims to be beautiful. Presenting an abundance of data is a challenge of our modern world where companies sit on terabytes and try to utilize their digital assets. Lot of energy goes into finding new ways of representations of big data sets, creative minds are putting huge efforts into trying to squeeze a lot of information into small screens. On the other hand, presenting small data is not a big deal, we have pie charts and column charts and even tree charts at hand, these are built in basic functionalities of any spreadsheet software.
Small data representations are often lack creativity. When I say “small data” I mean really small data, like your weight presented on scales or a speed of a car on a dashboard, or time on a clock. The representations we use for these are canonic, in the sense that children learn them in nursery school and these canonic representations are all around us in the same format. It seems like they will never change, no room and reason for rethinking.
I will challenge this through the example of time representations. My aim here is to find new, creative ways of representing time. Creativity will sometimes decrease or even kill usability, but this is a trade-off we need to ponder. Is the new solution too difficult to use as a real clock? Is it still usable and also a bit creative? These questions can be and should be asked, but these questions should not keep us from creating new representations.
I will start with analyzing the current representation solutions, find the rules behind them, and then break the rules.
Units of time
We usually divide up time to very short and also to very long units. Luckily most units are the same all around the world: day, hour, minute, second and only a few units are different in some places: the month and the year. Let’s see how the units relate to each other (I take the Western calendar system as a basis here)
Less commonly units also exist, eg. the first 100 days, seasons, financial quarter. I find it interesting that we do not use the multiple of the week, there is no hundred-weeks or ten-weeks period.
Each time representation focuses on only a few of these units: a clock on the wall might only have an hour and minute hand, a wall calendar beside the clock may show the days and the months, and so on.
Common features in time representations
Just look around and you will see a couple of different visualizations of time: watches and calendars mainly, but you also meet timelines, sand glasses and sometimes sundials. There are few different types of calendars: one might show a full month on a page, another only a week on a page, yet another only one day per page.
What is common and what is different in these visualizations?
One aspect we can find differences between them is the graphical representations they use. Timelines, sundials and watches use the line to represent time, while calendars are using tables, two dimensions so to say. Sand glasses are a different story, they represent time by movement.
Another difference between them whether they are reusable or can be used only once. If I have a calendar for the year 2022 I cannot use it again, unless I know which year has the same pattern, as there are only 14 different patterns. Still, I do not know. From my user perspective the calendar of 2022 is specific for 2022, can only be used in 2022. While a clock or a sand glass is completely reusable, they can be used every day, there is no clock specifically for January 13. 2022.
Another distinctive feature is if a time representation shows the actual time or it does not. A monthly calendar on the wall does not show what day it is or what time it is, while a clock on the same wall does show the actual time (given it works). There are some calendar types which try to fill this gap and give their users the option to keep them up to date by hand, eg. when a wall calendar is daily and their user did not forget to tear off yesteday’s page, then they show what day it is today. This is a key point here: some time representations show the actual time or date, so the users can be informed by them what date or time it is now, so they can get to know the Now value from it. I will use the term Now value for the actual time in the time unit used by a time representation.
To show the Now value you need to have a scale where one exact value is the Now and the other values are not Now. In other words and that might sound a little theoretical, showing Now value is like a function in maths: on the X axis we have timeline and for each values on the timeline the Now function can tell whether each value gets either true (Now) or false (not Now). So the actual date or time is where the Now function results in true value. The units of the X axis can be any time units, like years, days, hours and minutes. See the below example.
The classic clock
Clocks are all around the places from train stations to meeting rooms from tower of churches to our mobile phones. They are so ubiquitous that we do not think about alternative ways of showing what is the actual time.
If we look at the clock as a time representation machine, it has three layers:
Physical layer. This is responsible for the operation of the clock, so it makes the clock fulfil its task: to measure and show the actual time. Depending on the actual construction the physical layer of the clock is mechanical or electronic. In case of a mechanical clock there are cogs and springs and tourbillions and escapement mechanisms and alike in this layer. This is the layer you can touch.
Graphical layer: this is what we see, the hands, the numbers, the graduations, the background, this is the layer which visualizes the logical layer. It has the following components:
- dial: this is the circle with graduations and numbers marking the values for hours, minutes and for seconds.
- hands: their role is to show the actual hour, minute and second values on the dial, in other words their task is to highlight the Now values, so we can read what is the actual Now value
- background: its role is to make the two other graphical components more visible and give an esthetic frame for the whole clock.
Logical layer: this layer is independent from the actual mechanical and graphical solution, all classic clocks share the same logical layer. On this layer there are scales on which there are possible Now values and there is always an actual Now value. The tricky thing with the classic clock is that there are three different scales, the hour, the minute and the second scale, so there are three Now values: the actual hour, the actual minute and the actual second. Even if a clock only shows hour and minute there is a third scale on the logical layer. The logical layer has two components:
- the possible Now values: the possible hour values are the natural numbers from 0 to 12 or 0 to 24. Possible minute and second values go from 0 to 60. We can call these set of numbers as scales (ordered set of possible values). On the graphical layer the dial is the representation of the scales.
- the Now values: the actual hour, minute and second values. A Now value is always an element of the possible values. The hands are responsible on the graphical layer to represent (to show) the Now values.
There are some rules of how a clock visualizes time.
On the dial the numbers start on top and go to the right with equal steps dividing the circle into 12 equal sections, thus each section represents 1 hour. The same dial holds another scale, that of the minutes, where the numbers also start on top and go to the right with equal steps, but dividing the circle into 60 and not 12 sections. How lucky we are that 60 is just 5 times 12, so each hour grade indicates 5 minutes. There is also a third scale of seconds, which is very similar to the scale of minutes and thus it can be marked with the same graduation. The three scales are represented on a static dial in a way that the zero value is at the same place on all of them. Units are marked with grades and with numbers. Numbers are not always displayed or only a few notables of them are visible.
On a classic clock the hands go around and point to the actual hour and minute values, typically the shorter hand shows the hour and the longer one shows the minute and in case there is a hand for the second, it is the longest hand. So the hands are specialized, each one of them shows only one thing (hour or minute or second). The hands share their axis, their only fixed point, which is their starting point. The hands try to be as precise as possible: the hour hand not only points to the hour value, but tries to show the minute as well. E.g. at 6:37 the hour hand points to somewhere between 6 and 7, roughly to a point which is just over halfway between 6 and 7.
The background, the dial and the hands are all on the same plane, or at least are on parallel planes very close to each other.
There is an important consequence of the rules: the clock shows the minute value redundantly.
Showing the minute is primarily the responsibility of the minute hand, but beside that the hour hand tries to tell us the minute value too. If the clockface is big enough and the clockwork is precise enough then the hour hand can point to the exact minute, not only the hour making the minute hand redundant. In essence the minute hand only enlarges the minute value making it easier to read it, creating an ergonomic add-on. However theoretically if the clockface is even bigger, the hour hand could point even to the exact second, making the second hand redundant too.
To sum it up:
- small data is not less challenging to visualize in a creative way then big data
- time representations are canonic: only a few time representations are used, they are used all around us
- in this article I’ve collected the rules defining the way clocks represent time
creativity can spring from breaking the rules…
