Decisions, ideas and text clouds

Text clouds or tag clouds are increasingly common on the Internet nowadays. They normally indicate the words and ideas most used in a specific situation. The power of this design tool to help users make decisions seems as yet little researched. Emphasis on the main words through the use of font-size differences can change the way people read and search for information on the web. This simple visual way of showing ideas is discussed in this paper. The paper describes case studies and presents findings of empirical tests conducted on the effectiveness of text clouds.