TagRefinery: A Visual Tool for Tag Wrangling

We present TagRefinery, an interactive visual application aiding the cleaning and processing of open tag spaces, such as those in Last.fm or YouTube. Our pre-design analysis showed a need to support a spectrum of user expertise from novice to advanced, which resulted in two distinct interface modes. Summative evaluations of TagRefinery showed that it could effectively guide the novice users through the workflow by giving them brief but helpful explanations on why each step was required, and providing visual and statistical aids to help them in making important decisions. This is while our more expert users greatly appreciated the amount of control and granularity over the workflow that our more advanced interface mode offered. Both the underlying tag cleaning workflow and the interface were designed iteratively in a participatory design process in collaboration with research on a music recommendation interface based on Last.fm tags.