Time geographical representations are becoming a common approach to analysing spatio-temporal data. Such representations appear intuitive in the process of identifying patterns and features as paths of populations form tracks through the 3D space, which can be seen converging and diverging over time. In this article, we compare 2D and 3D representations within a time geographical visual analysis tool for activity diary data. We identify a representative task and evaluate task performance between the two representations. The results show that the 3D representation has benefits over the 2D representation for feature identification but also indicate that these benefits can be lost if the 3D representation is not carefully constructed to help the user to see them.
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