12.23
One of the greatest achievements of modern search engines is the ability to see the relationships between many different facets of the data. This is enabled by what’s known as “deep faceting” – knowing exactly how many results there are for each facet of the data.
The authors of DataFlow put it this way: “By giving shape to data, we… provide access and insight to the hidden patterns of meaning.”
In my earlier post, Precise to a Fault, I argued that result counts are most useful when they are used to indicate proportionality between facets. In this post, I’d like to look at some of the methods of presenting search-based information that help yield insight into how the data is related.
Tag Clouds
The first and most ubiquitous example is the tag cloud. It instantly communicates which terms are popular, and which are not. It is perhaps best suited for displaying words or short phrases where order is not important, such as tags on Flickr.
Flickr's tag cloud
Horizontal Bars
But tag clouds are ill-suited for more complex information where order is important. For linear lists, horizontal bars can be quite effective, essentially measuring each item against a standard. Last.fm pulls this off nicely to indicate how many tracks I listened to from each of my top artists over the last year.
Last.fm's bar list
Pie Charts
While tag clouds and horizontal bars are both easily achievable with traditional HTML and CSS, pie charts can also be a viable option with more creative techniques. Obviously pie charts require their components to total 100%, and so are quite useful for showing how individual slices compare to the whole.
Every year graphic designer Nicholas Felton compiles assorted statistics from his life into an amazingly illustrated report.
Histograms
Histograms can be quite useful for compactly representing large amount of chronological information. We were recently working on a project for a media company and needed to show how many times certain TV shows were scheduled to run over the next six weeks. We accomplished this with a histogram that plotted each day as a vertical bar, with the height of each bar indicating the number of shows for that day.
TwigKit combines a histogram visualisation with a range selection interface to give you insight into what you're selecting.
Mix and Match
Visualising Information can be a powerful tool for revealing the interconnectedness of the data. While each of these four visualisations has it’s own advantages and disadvantages, what’s important is that each piece of information be presented in a way that best reinforces it’s meaning.
Tyler Tate
Tyler is a user experience designer at TwigKit. He has been designing websites and web applications for 9 years and is the creator of The 1KB CSS Grid. You can keep up with Tyler on Twitter.
