MySemCloud: Semantic-aware Word Cloud Editing

TL;DR

MySemCloud is an interactive tool that enables users to create and refine semantic word clouds with improved semantic quality and user satisfaction through computer-assisted editing and force-based layout algorithms.

Contribution

It introduces a human-in-the-loop system for semantic word cloud editing that maintains semantic quality and user preferences during interactive modifications.

Findings

Users achieve higher quality layouts than existing tools.

The system preserves semantic relationships after edits.

High user satisfaction reported in evaluations.

Abstract

Word clouds are a popular text visualization technique that summarize an input text by displaying its most important words in a compact image. The traditional layout methods do not take proximity effects between words into account; this has been improved in semantic word clouds, where relative word placement is controlled by edges in a word similarity graph. We introduce MySemCloud, a new human-in-the-loop tool to visualize and edit semantic word clouds. MySemCloud lets users perform computer-assisted local moves of words, which improve or at least retain the semantic quality. To achieve this, we construct a word similarity graph on which a system of forces is applied to generate a compact initial layout with good semantic quality. The force system also allows us to maintain these attributes after each user interaction, as well as preserve the user's mental map. The tool provides algorithmic support for the editing operations to help the user enhance the semantic quality of the visualization, while adjusting it to their personal preference. We show that MySemCloud provides high user satisfaction as well as permits users to create layouts of higher quality than state-of-the-art semantic word cloud generation tools.