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Data literacy, an important goal for social studies education, involves teaching students how to comprehend, analyze, interpret, evaluate, create, and argue with data and data visualizations such as timelines, maps, and graphs. Digital data visualizations support rapid inquiry and explorations that would be difficult on paper - such as adding data to an existing data visualization or creating multiple data visualizations of the same variable at multiple times or places for easy comparison. The process of asking questions and finding answers through data exploration is an important part of social studies education. While the authors recognize that there are many online data visualization tools that can be used in classrooms, they designed their tools, DV4L and Timeline Builder, specifically for use in social studies classrooms and based on feedback from prospective and current teachers. The authors have taken care to include features that teachers said would be useful in social studies data inquiry lessons and activities. These are still in a prototype phase, but are free to use and online.
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This content will become publicly available on June 21, 2026
Understanding Time in Space: Improving Timeline Understandability for Uncrewed Space Systems
Timelines are critical in space exploration. Timelines facilitate planning, resource management, and automation of uncrewed missions. As NASA and other space agencies increasingly rely on timelines for autonomous spacecraft operations, ensuring their understandability and verifiability is essential for mission success. However, interdisciplinary design teams face challenges in interpreting timelines due to variations in cultural and educational backgrounds, leading to communication barriers and potential system mismatches. This work-in-progress research explores time-oriented data visualizations to improve timeline comprehension in space systems. We contribute (1) a survey of visualization techniques, identifying patterns and gaps in historic time-oriented data visualizations and industry tools, (2) a focus group pilot study analyzing user interpretations of timeline visualizations, and (3) a novel method for visualizing aggregate runs of a timeline on a complex system, including identification of key features for usability of aggregate-data visuals. Our findings inform future visualization strategies for debugging and verifying timelines in uncrewed systems. While focused on space, this research has broader implications for aerospace, robotics, and emergency response systems.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2152117
- PAR ID:
- 10617535
- Publisher / Repository:
- Schloss Dagstuhl
- Date Published:
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- Human-Centered Design, Time-Oriented Data Visualization, Uncrewed Spacecraft Operations, Formal Methods
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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