A comparison of linear and calendar travel itinerary visualizations for personal digital assistants

Various graphical travel itinerary visualization systems have in recent years been developed to allow making easier references between different events such as flights and hotel bookings on a travel itinerary, thereby addressing a problem with tabular itineraries which list travel events in a chronological order of date and time, and only allow referencing consecutive events. These graphical travel itinerary systems are based on a linear visualization of travel events. Although this linear visualization deals with some of the problems associated with tabular itineraries, it is not the only form of visualization which might be capable of addressing these issues. This paper introduces a new visualization of travel itineraries, called the calendar visualization, which relies on a more familiar concept of calendars to depict the relationships between travel events. This paper also describes an empirical study undertaken to compare the calendar and linear itinerary visualizations

The University of Waikato usability laboratory

The University of Waikato Usability Laboratory is an environment where researchers are able to study and assess the usability of products while being used by their intended users. It allows for flexible configuration, and in particular can accommodate studies involving groups of collaborating users. This paper describes the Usability Laboratory with a particular emphasis on its background-why the Laboratory was established-and the facilities and services that it provides