Microsoft Research.
IEEE Trans Vis Comput Graph. 2010 Nov-Dec;16(6):1182-9. doi: 10.1109/TVCG.2010.194.
Tag clouds have proliferated over the web over the last decade. They provide a visual summary of a collection of texts by visually depicting the tag frequency by font size. In use, tag clouds can evolve as the associated data source changes over time. Interesting discussions around tag clouds often include a series of tag clouds and consider how they evolve over time. However, since tag clouds do not explicitly represent trends or support comparisons, the cognitive demands placed on the person for perceiving trends in multiple tag clouds are high. In this paper, we introduce SparkClouds, which integrate sparklines into a tag cloud to convey trends between multiple tag clouds. We present results from a controlled study that compares SparkClouds with two traditional trend visualizations—multiple line graphs and stacked bar charts—as well as Parallel Tag Clouds. Results show that SparkClouds ability to show trends compares favourably to the alternative visualizations.
标签云在过去十年中在网络上迅速普及。它们通过字体大小来直观地展示标签出现的频率，从而为文本集合提供了一个可视化的摘要。在实际应用中，随着相关数据源随时间的变化，标签云也可以不断演变。围绕标签云的有趣讨论通常包括一系列标签云，并考虑它们随时间的演变。然而，由于标签云并没有明确表示趋势或支持比较，因此人们在感知多个标签云中的趋势时需要付出很高的认知努力。在本文中，我们引入了 SparkClouds，它将 Sparkline 集成到标签云中，以传达多个标签云之间的趋势。我们展示了一项对照研究的结果，该研究将 SparkClouds 与两种传统的趋势可视化方法——多个折线图和堆叠条形图——以及 Parallel Tag Clouds 进行了比较。结果表明，SparkClouds 展示趋势的能力优于其他可视化方法。
