VIEWING PERSONAL HISTORY RECORDS - A COMPARISON OF TABULAR FORMAT ANDGRAPHICAL PRESENTATION USING LIFELINES

Thirty-six participants used a static version of either Lifelines, a g raphical interface, or a tabular representation to answer questions ab out a database of temporal personal history information. Results sugge st that overall the Lifelines representation led to much faster respon se times, primarily for questions which involved interval comparisons and making intercategorical connections. A 'first impression' test sho wed that Lifelines can reduce some of the biases of the tabular record summary. A post-experimental memory test led to significantly (p<0.00 4) higher recall for Lifelines. Finally, simple interaction techniques are proposed to compensate for the problems of the static Lifelines d isplay's ability to deal with precise dates, attribute coding and over laps.