Most recent photos would be more difficult to display in this kind of fashion. New photos don’t share a common thread with other photos. That is unless we get back to differentiating by tags. In that respect you could possibly display the most recent tags. Which could be useful, as it could show trends live.

It’s a leap to say that categories with the most amount of topics are the most useful to a user. For example…on Flickr 2004 is the biggest item, though I don’t really care about pictures taken in 2004 because I want to see the newest photos on the system.

I’m curious as to what redundancies you have found. One of the problems with the examples shown above is that much of the useful information comes out of a comparative analysis of the items as a whole. With each item in equal proportion the visualizations would limit the degree to which the user could attain useful information.

Language processing requires a greater amount of cognitive load than one would imagine. Interpreting character representations, analyzing grammar and syntax and then ultimately determining meaning. But one must keep in mind that Web users are not actively reading, they are scanning.

Visual cognition requires processes such as object and pattern recognition in order to determine meaning. Simple heuristics are employed to quickly make initial judgments in terms of meaning. In this case, bigger means more and smaller means fewer. It may not be as easy to make judgments as quickly and accurately when employing such heuristics for language processing. Additionally, visual representations can transcend language barriers.

Obviously more work and testing needs to be done in order to push forward with these types of techniques.

As an organizational layer, visual cues often are the last bit of meaningful information our brain will process. Organization is a left brain function where logical and sequential order define our understanding of each item’s relationship. When presented with a list of items, it’s clear and orderly and each item’s importance is easily understood.

Utilizing “fuzzy” information such as shape or color requires the right side of the brain and can provide a conflict situation making the entire list harder to read quickly.

Bottom line is, it just looks dumb and it’s not really needed.