Time Perception by Webb Zhou and Xuwei Haung

The nature of time remains a subject of debate among humans (Rovelli, 2019). In the 1970s, experiments (Hafele and Keating, 1972) first proved Einstein's depiction of time in his theory of general relativity - that time passes at different speeds in different locations and at different velocities (Rovelli, 2019). If the single, uniformly flowing time that I commonly perceive does not exist, should I still continue to believe in the time told by my watch? As Kant (1934) once mentioned, "The basis of the temporal structure of the world is to be sought in something that closely relates to our way of thinking and perceiving, to our consciousness." This also led me to further explore and observe time within our consciousness. Personally, my perception of the passage of time often differs from the numbers my clock tells me. When I wait for my stop in a signal-less subway, time seems to freeze; but when I chat with friends, an hour disappears in the blink of an eye. What factors influence the difference between our perceived time and clock time, and what exists in the gap between the two? This project aims to provide a perspective for data visualisation enthusiasts and people who interested in this subject to observe this through data visualisation, leading them to capture more details in specific perception scenarios.
During the project, through the research method of Cultural Probes, I invited ten participants to record details such as their perceived time and clock time during their daily activities. These valuable data tell me about the background context of each time perception and their personal subjective experiences, displaying the four main factors influencing time perception mentioned by Block (2014): "characteristics of the time experiencer, contents of a time period, activities during a time period, and time-related behaviours and judgments" in specific scenarios.
In the two parts of the final output, the first part presents a set of charts on a wall of clocks, showing the audience the difference between the perceived length of a minute and the clock time of a minute in different event types for the ten participants. These calculation results are based on the data provided by the participants. I hope to quickly convey the subject of the project to the audience through the first part and tell a short but engaging data story. In the second part, located in the publication beneath the clocks, further explanations are provided to the audience about the background of each chart on the wall, the details and influencing factors in the participants' time perception process, and other content related to time perception. I believe the second part's further elucidation of the data can evoke empathy in the audience and convey the subjectivity displayed by the participants in their time perception process as well as the complexity of time perception itself from the perspective of the ten participants. Based on these two parts of the output, this project aims to encourage the audience to observe and explore the details in their time perception behaviour and gain a deeper understanding of their perception patterns.