We have a webapp that lets users to create their own tags and assign them data rows for identification purposes.
Currently design looks something like this like this:
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Created tags:
tag1, tag2, tag3,
tag4, tag5...
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Table of items:
item | tag2, tag5
item | tag1
item | ...
--------------------
The problem we are having is that some users use 1 to 3 tags and others use 50-100. So in other words, design & UX has to work with arbitrary amount of tags. We also make it possible for users to click a tag and filter table below.
So we've been trying to find a way to display tags so that it can handle arbitrary amount of tags but still keep it very simple. We considered using collapsible tree menus but from UX POV that looks cumbersome when you've 1-3 tags and you've to click trees open. Current design works great with small number of tags but falls apart when you've a lot of them.
Is there any patterns that would handle this type of UX better than our solution?