archive.Joe Lamantia.com

In Pivoting on tags to create better navigation UI Matt McAllister offers the idea that we’re seeing “a new user interface evolving out of tag data,” and uses Wikio as an example. For context, he places tag clouds within a continuum of the evolution of web navigation, from list views to the new tag-based navigation emerging now.

It’s an insightful post, and it allows me to build on strong groundwork to talk more about why and how tag clouds differ from earlier forms of navigation, and will become [part of] a new user interface.
Matt identifies five ‘leaps’ in web navigation interfaces that I’ll summarize:

A Lesson in ‘Listory’
As Matt mentions, all four predecessors to tag based navigation are really variations on the underlying form of the list. There’s useful history in the evolution of lists as web navigation tools. Early lists used for navigation were static, chosen by a site owner, ordered, and flat: recall the lists of favorite sites that appeared at the bottom of so many early personal home pages.

These basic navigation lists evolved a variety of ordering schemes, (alphabetical, numeric), began to incorporate hierarchy (shown as sub-menus in navigation systems, or as indenting in the left-column Matt mentions), and allowed users to change their ordering, for example by sorting on a variety of fields or columns in search results.

From static lists whose contents do not change rapidly and reflect a single point of view, the lists employed for web navigation and search results then became dynamic, personalized, and reflective of multiple points of view. Amazon and other e-commerce destinations offered recently viewed items (yours or others), things most requested, sets bounded by date (published last year), sets driven by varying parameters (related articles), and lists determined by the navigation choices of others who followed similar paths.)

But they remained fundamentally lists. They itemized or enumerated choices of one kind or another, indicated implicit or explicit precedence through ordering or the absence of ordering, and were designed for linear interaction patterns: start at the beginning (or the end, if you preferred an alternative perspective – I still habitually read magazines from back to front…) and work your way through.

Tag clouds are different from lists, often by contents and presentation, and more importantly by basic assumption about the kind of interaction they encourage. On tag-based navigation Matt says, “This is a new layer that preempts the search box in a way. The visual representation of it is a tag cloud, but the interaction is more like a pivot.” Matt’s mention of the interaction hits on an important aspect that’s key to understanding the differences between clouds and lists: clouds are not linear, and are not designed for linear consumption in the fashion of lists.

I’m not saying that no one will read clouds left to right (with Roman alphabets), or right to left if they’re in Hebrew, or in any other way. I’m saying that tag clouds are not meant for ‘reading’ in the same way that lists are. As they’re commonly visualized today, clouds support multiple entry points using visual differentiators such as color and size.

Starting in the middle of a list and wandering around just increases the amount of visual and cognitive work involved, since you need to remember where you started to complete your survey. Starting in the “middle” of a tag cloud – if there is such a location – with a brightly colored and big juicy visual morsel is *exactly* what you’re supposed to do. It could save you quite a lot of time and effort, if the cloud is well designed and properly rendered.

Kunal Anand created a visualization of the intersections of his del.icio.us tags that shows the differences between a cloud and a list nicely. This is at heart a picture, and accordingly you can start looking at it anywhere / anyway you prefer.

Visualizing My Del.icio.us Tags

We all know what a list looks like…

iTunes Play Lists

What’s In a Name?
Describing a tag cloud as a weighted list (I did until I’d thought about it further) misses this important qualitative difference, and reflects our early stages of understanding of tag clouds. The term “weighted list” is a list-centered view of tag clouds that comes from the preceding frame of reference. It’s akin to describing a computer as an “arithmetic engine”, or the printing press as “movable type”.

[Aside: The label for tag clouds will probably change, as we develop concepts and language to frame new the user experiences and information environments that include clouds. For example, the language Matt uses – the word ‘pivot’ when he talks about the experience of navigating via the tag cloud in Wikio, not the word ‘follow’ which is a default for describing navigation – in the posting and his screencast reflects a possible shift in framing.]

A Camera Obscura For the Semantic Landscape
I’ve come to think of a tag cloud as something like the image produced by a camera obscura.
Camera Obscura

Where the camera obscura renders a real-world landscape, a tag cloud shows a semantic landscape like those created by Amber Frid-Jimenez at MIT.

Semantic Landscape

Semantic Landscape

Like a camera obscura image, a tag cloud is a filtered visualization of a multidimensional world. Unlike a camera obscura image, a tag cloud allows movement within the landscape. And unlike a list, tag clouds can and do show relationships more complex than one-dimensional linearity (experienced as precedence). This ability to show more than one dimension allows clouds to reflect the structure of the environment they visualize, as well as the contents of that environment. This frees tag clouds from the limitation of simply itemizing or enumerating the contents of a set, which is the fundamental achievement of a list.

Earlier, I shared some observations on the structural evolution – from static and flat to hierarchical and dynamic – of the lists used as web navigation mechanisms. As I’ve ventured elsewhere, we may see a similar evolution in tag clouds.

It is already clear that we’re witnessing evolution in the presentation of tag clouds in step with their greater visualizatin capabilities. Clouds now rely on an expanding variety of visual cues to show an increasingly detailed view of the underlying semantic landscape: proximity, depth, brightness, intensity, color of item, color of field around item. I expect clouds will develop other cues to help depict the many connections (permanent or temporary) linking the labels in a tag cloud. It’s possible that tag clouds will offer a user experience similar to some of the ontology management tools available now.

Is this “a new user interface”? That depends on how you define new. In Shaping Things, author and futurist Bruce Sterling suggests, “the future composts the past” – meaning that new elements are subsumed into the accumulation of layers past and present. In the context of navigation systems and tag clouds, that implies that we’ll see mixtures of lists from the four previous stages of navigation interface, and clouds from the latest leap; a fusion of old and new.

Examples of this composting abound, from 30daytags.com to Wikio that Matt McAllister examined.

30DayTags.com Tag Clouds

Wikio Tag Cloud

As lists encouraged linear interactions as a result of their structure, it’s possible that new user interfaces relying on tag clouds will encourage different kinds of seeking or finding behaviors within information experiences. In “The endangered joy of serendipity” William McKeen bemoans the decrease of serendipity as a result of precisely directed and targeted media, searching, and interactions. Tag clouds – by offering many connections and multiple entry paths simultaneously – may help rejuvenate serendipity in danger in a world of closely focused lists.