I need to say it! I can’t hold it! I need to get it off my chest.
Before I insult anyone or sound like a pretentious web-know-it-all:
I’ve been guilty of doing some amateur information architecture and in that time I made many mistakes (believe me, there are pro’s who almost killed me for that). I love to be able to make mistakes, they deliver their own insights and ideas. So, let me be clear about this, I’m all about experimenting and playing around with novel concepts but their is a time to look back and learn from what we’ve done.
As the title suggests my rant is about tagclouds (or weighted lists). Like many others I was seduced by these cool looking things and being an enthusiastic person I used them. But some time ago I started realizing something about them and I seem to be on my own about it.
They’re a lazy solution and cheap-ass excuse for a navigation!
Never use them if you want your users to navigate though your tags. Really, check your analytics, people rarely use it.
I love the concept of weighted tags but the difference in size makes the tags very hard to read or scan, try it, it gives you migraines.
There are many other ways to navigate tags. What about oldskool alphabetical dropdowns + numbers to show the amount of items? I’m sure those rich-interface-flex-guru-types also have some great alternatives.
Using them to make your website look 2.0 is also not done (I’m not going into the 2.0-look thing, that could be a rant on it’s own). FYI, they have been around for some time now and they lost all of their novelty value, it’s as hip and bold like wearing jeans in church these days. At least try to do something new and make new mistakes.
I have to admit, they’re not all bad. They’re great to quickly “feel” the subjects on a blog or other sites that have no fixed topic. Having one for that reason is OK, (and while it’s there the tags might as well be clickable). Just know that no person in their right mind really “navigates” on these random-topic sites.
Anyway, a tag cloud is a data visualization thing, not a navigation thing.
