Re: visual topic organization

[Peter Harvey <pah06 uow edu au>]

On Wed, 2004-06-23 at 21:07, Reinout van Schouwen wrote:
> Something to think about for the future.. how about organizing topics
> visually in a cluster map or Venn diagram?
> 
> Compare:
> 
> http://www.cs.vu.nl/~frankh/
> http://nooface.com/articles/04/06/21/193204.shtml

While I'm all for enhancing parts of the topic system (see my patch for
automatically constructing a hierarchy from your topics), this isn't
something I'd suggest. A user's collection of bookmarks should be
something very easy to access, and any navigation system should be quick
for the user to interpret.

A graph-based representation of topics may be useful for exploration
(like that shown on Frank van Harmelen's website), but isn't too good
for allowing rapid access. Remember it shows a large amount of
information which is irrelevant for bookmark access (such as the number
of items within a given category/topic).

A Venn diagram for an arbitrary collection of sets is not always a good
way to present data. I can't realistically think of a good way to
present it.

I could present another argument against what you suggest by comparing
with the patch I created. It does something similar to what you're
suggesting (automatically building a structured interface), but is
focused on retrieval of a single bookmark. It uses a hierarchical menu
which allows the user to filter their bookmarks until they find the
cluster (and bookmark) they want. But it avoids presenting irrelevant
information such as the number of bookmarks in a given topic/s, or the
interrelationships between topics. The reduction in irrelevant
information which is given to the user simplifies the interface and
allows the user to operate faster ... or so I think :).

-- 
Peter Harvey.
Mostly Quiet.