CMSC 838S
Information Visualization
University of Maryland, Human-Computer Interaction Lab
Application Report
Georg Apitz
geapi[at]cs[dot]umd[dot]edu
Spring 2006
Prof. Ben Shneiderman
Conference Planning Visualization
Introduction
The purpose of this application report is to show how two different tools achieve the task of project management, here specifically for the planning of a conference. Conference planning is a rather complex task that involves several people with different responsibilities and different tasks. Usually there is a general committee that manages and oversees the planning process and there are other resources such as reviewers, authors, presenters, organizers, hands etc. A smooth cooperation of these people is essential for a successful conference. The tools I looked at are not specifically designed for the task of “planning a conference”, they are general project management tools. One of them is a freely available open source project called GanttProject and the other one is Merlin a commercial product that is available for purchase for about 160 Dollars. Naturally, one would expect that the open source version has less features and the commercial version is better developed.
Data-set
The data-set that was explored was the task-list for the Human-Computer Lab Summer Open House and Symposium, that resembles the planning basis for this event. It consists of 35 different task in which different people are involved and different responsibilities apply. The initial data was stored in a Word document and then converted into an Excel spreadsheet which contained the different task with deadlines and who is responsible for completing the task and who receives a report after/ during completion. Ganttproject allowed to import the task-list, but did not allow to import dates or any resources connected to the task. So after importing all the tasks the dates had to be entered by hand as well as the resources. Merlin on the other hand allowed the use of resources directly from my address book but had no support for import of any kind. Both applications supported the export of the created project in different formats and as web pages. Unfortunately, non of the formats was compatible with each other so that I had to enter the data twice.
Figure 1: A screenshot of the initial Excel table.
Looking at the data
The initial Excel table in Figure 1 shows that it is really difficult to see who is doing what since the tasks are order chronologically. Also, it is not clear if there are any gaps between the dates or how they related to each other. Looking at the Gantt-charts in Figure 2 and 3, created by the applications, two things become immediately obvious. First, we have a huge gap between some tasks done in June 2005 and the next ones in December 2005. Second, a larger number of tasks occurs near the end of the planning phase.
Figure 2: A screenshot of the Gantt-chart produced by Merlin, the marks show task on the task list, green ones are completed, red ones are overdue and blue ones are to do in the future. It is immediately obvious which task are already done, which ones need special attention and which ones happen in the future.
Figure 3: A screenshot of the Gantt-chart produced by Ganttproject, all the task have the same color, so it is rather difficult to judge what has been done already, what might be critical and what is in time.
Figure 4: The Gantt-chart from Merlin that shows the task divided by person in charge of it. Again a very clear picture of who is doing what, what is done and what is critical can be taken from the chart.
The dependencies between tasks become obvious by looking a the NetPlan in Figure 5. It was to expect that the different phases of the project and also several tasks would depend on each other. But, especially in the initial Excel table there was no easy way of seeing these dependencies. Merlin offers another option to visualize dependencies, by overlaying arrows in the Gantt-chart as seen in Figure 6. Which shows nicely the dependencies in this cascading manner that we also see in Figure 5.
Figure 5: A NetPlan from Merlin that shows the connection and dependencies between the different tasks. Again, the color coding makes it easy to see what has been done and what needs to be done.
Figure 6: The Gantt-chart of the different tasks with dependencies shows as arrows. This kind of visualization makes it easy to see how the different stages and task depend on each other.
Conclusion
Looking at the planning data of the Summer Open House provided the basis to get an understanding for the complexity of such a planning event and showed me how misleading an Excel spreadsheet can be, in a way that in its one dimensional representation the complexity of the event to organize is hard to see. With the tools used, it is possible to visualize dependencies very efficiently and also to see specific patterns in the planning event like the accumulation of tasks in the last month before the event. The major draw-back of the visualization with these tools is the missing feature of showing social patterns that are underlying to the organization of such an event. These would be responsibilities that go beyond the point of “doing the task” but more toward who to “report to”. Also, email or other communication that is necessary including reminders for such communication would be helpful.
Resources
Special thanks to Kiki for helping me with the data.
last updated: March 4th 2006 by geapi