[IxDA Discuss] Spider diagram / Cloud cluster tools

Tue Jan 23 09:12:19 PST 2007

Have you come across gnod.net. It does something that looks a bit  
like visual theasarus without the links between things. Instead is  
clusters things together based of how "similar" they are. In Gnod's  
case is does movies, books and music, and similarity is determined (I  
think) in a similar way to Amazon's "people who liked X also liked Y".

Whether you could get hold of the inner workings to use it for  
something different I don't know, but it might be work a look. I  
think it was done for a university project so there's a chance at least.

Cheers
--Pete

On 23 Jan 2007, at 13:08, Dean Wilson wrote:

> Thanks Laura,
>
> Think map's Visual thesaurus is pretty close to what I am looking  
> for (in
> terms of behaviour). Having had the evening to think about it I  
> realise that
> what I am really after is something that aggregates content/items  
> around
> nodes.
>
> As Eric suggests I could probably prototype something in Flash. I just
> wanted to see if someone might have already done the hard work for  
> me ;)
>
> In the meantime I have been using MindJet's
> MindManager<http://www.mindjet.com/us/>to manually organise/visualise
> relationships. Not really what I want but a
> useful tool to add to one's bag of tricks.
>
> My search continues.
>
> Cheers
>
> Dean
>
> On 1/22/07, laura olac <laura.olac at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> This is a technology that was used to build Smithsonian without walls
>> if any of you ever came across that environment. It was beautifully
>> done, unfortunately it is no longer available online. Take a look at
>> Thinkmap. They have a little demo there that will give you an idea if
>> this is what you are looking for: http://www.thinkmap.com/
>>
>> Laura
>>
>> On 1/22/07, E. Miller <subscriptionbox at squishymedia.com> wrote:
>>> I don't know, Esteban.  iTunes visualizations?  Two issues: one,  
>>> it's a
>> real
>>> stretch as an abstraction.  What are the analogies/parallels to  
>>> the user
>>> experience?  Secondly, I can't easily see how it could be done in  
>>> such a
>> way
>>> that doesn't look sophomoric.  I appreciate your ability to think  
>>> beyond
>>> convention but I often have a hard time understanding how your  
>>> numerous
>>> suggestions are applicable.  Sorry.
>>>
>>> To speak to Dean's original question: I can think of examples  
>>> more than
>> I
>>> can think of specific applications (though Flash could easily be  
>>> used to
>>> prototype an example.)  I like how the BBC site uses color to  
>>> emphasize
>>> areas of heavy use.  Click on a section more often, the color  
>>> becomes
>> more
>>> intense.  (they may not be using this as much now, however)
>>> http://www.holovaty.com/blog/archive/2002/11/21/1253
>>> And Amazon's user-specific customizations based on history (not  
>>> only on
>>> their own site but in their syndicated advertisements as well) are
>>> interesting in this regard.
>>>
>>> There are several visualization-oriented search tools that leap  
>>> to mind
>> like
>>> Grokker (in map view) or anacubis or Kartoo that might be useful for
>> showing
>>> non-linear drilldown into related content groups similar to the  
>>> way that
>>> users click around in sites.
>>>
>>> And an observation: I'd be curious to hear what everyone feels  
>>> are best
>>> practices around this level of on-the-fly user-specific  
>>> customization.
>>> Flash developers, for example, run into issues of user  
>>> disorientation
>> and
>>> 'breaking' things like browser back buttons, bookmarking  
>>> functionality,
>> and
>>> coherent search engine indexing.  User-specific customization  
>>> approaches
>> can
>>> make for a compelling user experience, but is there a functional  
>>> cost in
>> the
>>> context of the larger patterns of current web practices and
>> technologies?
>>>
>>> Eric
>>>
>>> On 1/22/07 10:14 AM, "Esteban Barahona" <esteban.barahona at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> play with fractals... iTunes visualization + your favorite music
>>>>
>>>> 2007/1/22, Dean Wilson <thedeanofwilson at gmail.com>:
>>>>>
>>>>> Hi,
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm looking for a tool that can help me to dynamically visualise /
>> explain
>>>>> to a client how content within a site might aggregate around
>> different
>>>>> themes, or have greater or lesser priority/prominence depending on
>> the
>>>>> user
>>>>> journey through site.
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm thinking that some form of spider diagram or cloud-cluster  
>>>>> tool
>> might
>>>>> be
>>>>> the way to go. Has anyone got any recommendations?
>>>>>
>>>>> thanks
>>>>>
>>>>> Dean
>>>>>
>>>>> Dean Wilson
>>>>> Senior UEA, MRM Worldwide
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>
>
>
> -- 
> DW
>
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