Hey Bud - Visualize This!

A shift is taking place on the web these days. There is of course the advent of Web2.0 with it's more interactive and engaging content. The shift that seems to be accompanying it is 'visualization'.


Historically, content has been displayed in a very linear way. Part of that was due to limitations in technology, but it was also just the way things were done. Now, the bar is being raised and content is being presented in a way that allows context to be communicated in the way the information is laid out.

I have seen a couple of instances where people have gone overboard, but I am beginning to see some pretty inventive (and useful) ways this has been utilized. Here are some examples.

Tag Clouds
You will see these around in a number of places, and you should start seeing more of them. These are tag clouds. The size of each link varies depending on it's relevance or frequency in a given list (i.e. tags related to blogs or other posted content). This, I think, recognizes the way the eye, which is to say the brain via the eye, interprets what it is looking at in a way that is more appropriate than lists that differentiate priority based on text (i.e. numbers or dates) associated with the given content.

(I took this from Silva's blog, thanks Silva)

TouchGraph
This is an application that allows you to visualize your Facebook friend list, the connections between friends, and most usefully, the photo connections between friends (i.e. which friends are in photos with whom). It ends up creating a pretty accurate representation of your (non-linear) circle of friends.



DiggArc
I am intrigued by this one, but I am not 100% convinced of it's utility. It is a visual representation of the stories that are popular on Digg, the degree of popularity, the users they are popular with, and the connections between all of these things. (see the graphic at the top of this article)

For this and other pretty cool visualizations see http://labs.digg.com/

C|Net News - Related Stories
As you will see in the graphic below (or if you follow the link) the related news stories are presented in a non-linear visual way that gives weight and relevance to each story by modifying the relative sizes and colours.



You will notice in the graphic above that the user is given the opportunity to view the articles in a more traditional list, which I think is good for the time being while these types of interfaces are unfamiliar.

There are many other examples, that I may draw attention to in a later post, but I think you are going to begin to see more of this kind of representation of information, and that's a good thing.