Rob Kozinets, professor of marketing at York University, has been writing about the meaning and insights we can glean from word clouds.
In the play, in that visual appeal, I think there is something deeper that can happen. Because we get some good analysis packed into an at-a-glance form, I think we have opportunities to use that ultimate piece of ’software,’ the human mind and imagination, to glean insight from these word pictures.
I think Rob is onto something. I took my annual professional/personal manifesto and put it through Wordle, a free world cloud tool, and found a fascinating picture. In fact, the picture is more motivating and guiding for me than the words on a page. The words that “pop” are obviously especially important to me. Yet I hadn’t really taken time to think about what they really mean until seeing them.
I like Rob’s wrap about the topic: “Word cloud: toy, art, or serious research tool. Why should we have to choose?”
