Note

The TagSpheres homepage is still under construction. A few things will be added soon, e.g.,

• a tutorial, and
• the TagSpheres source code!

Please follow @vizcovery to get updates and news about TagSpheres!

What are TagSpheres?

Tag clouds are widely applied, popular visualization techniques as they illustrate summaries of textual data in an intuitive, lucid manner. Many layout algorithms for tag clouds have been developed in the recent years, but none of these approaches is designed to reflect the notion of hierarchical distance. For that purpose, we introduce a novel tag cloud layout called TagSpheres. By arranging tags on various hierarchy levels and applying appropriate colors, the importance of individual tags to the observed topic gets assessable. To explore relationships among various hierarchy levels, we aim to place related tags closely. Three usage scenarios from the digital humanities (left), sports (middle) and aviation (right) exemplify the applicability and point out the benefit of TagSpheres.

Thanks!

For the support of friends and family and fruitful discussions with colleagues, TagSpheres want to say "Thank You" to Anna Jänicke, Christin Richter, Judith Blumenstein, Gerik Scheuermann and the participants of the TagSpheres field study!