Time and Tide Wait for No Diagram

Time plays an important role in some application domains, and can be quite difficult to deal with in diagrams. This is not only true for temporal uncertainty, but also for periodic events. We compare nine different representations that include a notion of time or that are mainly used for temporal information: Time Lines/LifeLines, AsbruView, Ganttand PERT-Charts, Shinkansen timetables, Temporal Objects, Sets of Possible Occurrences (SOPOs), the Time Cube and Concentric Circles. Features of the different methods are presented and compared to other representations. This paper is meant to help the designer of a diagram or visualization who has to deal with time get an overview over different design ideas, and maybe get an inspiration for their own ideas.