Using synchronised tag clouds for browsing data collections

Abstract

Tag clouds have become a popular means of visualising and browsing data, especially in Web 2.0 applications. We show how they can be used to provide flexible and intuitive interfaces to web search services over data collections by using multiple synchronised tag clouds to browse that data. A data collection can have alternative tag clouds and a tag cloud alternative visualisations, with the choice of tag cloud and visualisation at any time controlled by a combination of user selection, developer specification and default system behaviour. A search interface is defined by an augmented data model that specifies the viewer classes, their associated tag clouds and the visualisations of these tag clouds. We demonstrate the approach by describing how we implemented a web application to browse data related to researchers and their publications. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.