Navigation aid?

But what exactly is this function then? UI-patterns summarizes the problem a tag cloud is supposed to solve as:

The user wants to browse content by popularity or most elaborate topic

In short: a tag cloud is a navigation aid. The user wants to browse and is in need of information on popularity to decide where he wants to go next.

Fish-eye, birds-eye

This description of a tag cloud is valid if the tag cloud is considered from a fish-eye perspective. The user looks at it from his current location, has a clear idea where he wants to go and is presented with several ‘doors’ to choose from. In that case it really makes sense to order these doors in a predictable manner, e.g. alphabetically.

On the other hand, a tag cloud from a birds-eye perspective has a different purpose. The user does not want to know which particular options he has, but he wants an overview, for orientation. A problem with classic sitemaps is that they easily get cluttered for sites with many pages. A tagcloud solves this, by showing only the landmarks, or by clearly marking those landmarks.

Orientation aid

A tagcloud can be compared with a window display for a shop. It shows what kind of items the shop has to offer. But it is not a catalogue, where items are classified in such a way that someone who is looking for a particular item can find it quickly. Alphabetic ordering would only makes sense if a tag cloud were meant as a look-up table. But for this purpose there are other (better) tools available: hierarchies, search forms, indexes, etcetera. As an orientation aid frequency ordering makes more sense than alphabetic ordering, because with the former it is easier to find the ‘landmarks’.

Alternative sorting principles

There are many more possibilites when it comes to sorting. Semantic clustering sounds very promising, where items are placed together according to their semantic distance (closeness in meaning). Technically this is much more difficult than frequency sorting or alphabetic sorting, because it requires processing to a semantic level.

A quick glance through the entries shows that the boundaries between feature requests and interface design are not always clear. Many entries focus on new features, which is quite natural if you ask users what they want to change. There are many interesting ideas, though.

What perhaps struck me most is that between the many manipulated screenshots, there were also a few hand-drawn pictures. In general I’d say that these really stand out from the rest, both in the visual aspects and in their clarity. As usual, less is more.

Additional thoughts

(July 12, 2008)

A more serious note on this topic: when you ask people what they think, or how much they like your product, it can be very difficult to interpret the results. If possible (and if it makes sense in the context) I prefer comparisons (which color is nicer, blue or red) above open-scaled questions (how much do you like blue?). Of course, there are many other tricks to get meaningful results.

As we are moving towards a semantic web, with more dynamic, user-generated content, social bookmarking is a valuable tool to structure that apparent chaos. The main weakness is that the wisdom of the crowds is not always the truth (but often close enough).

I’m usually not a fast upgrader, and I’m still using Skype 2.0.0.something. Easy to learn, easy to use, I like it. However, a little while ago I was surprised by a confusing warning message:

“Are you sure you want to cancel the file transfer?” Choose between “OK” and “Cancel”.
Somehow, the “Do not ask me again” option was very appealing!

This kind of mistake in warning messages is not uncommon. I found almost the same dialog, with the same problem, in an early Dutch version of Gmail. “Wilt u de wijzigingen annuleren?”

It’s not that difficult to solve though. The main problem lies in using the OK/Cancel dialog, which can often be easily avoided. Use descriptive options instead. “Are you sure you want to stop the transfer?” “Stop transfer” / “Cancel”