kanjidist.org is a new website that allows you to navigate through a map of kanji arranged by similarity. Each click puts another kanji in focus and arranges a neighborhood of the most similar kanji in a suitable way. You can choose currently between four types of similarity measures and display information from Jisho or Jotoba along with the kanji in focus.
Three of the similarity measures are based on visual differences, the fourth one on differences of the concepts that are displayed.
Clearly, two people will never agree completely on how similar different kanji are. So any single map can only be a rough approximation to some ideal. Even taking this into account, you will find many objective inaccuracies in any of the four similarity measures if you try them out for a while. Trying to improve those is a (slowly but surely) ongoing project.
One of my hopes with the kanjidist site is that it may help us all in building a lasting memory of all essential kanji by uncovering similarities between them early on and allowing to study similar kanji in comparison.
At least that’s my theory for now. I’d be interested to hear your feedback. Especially, whether you think that a site like this may support your kanji learning or whether you think it is all just nice pictures, but doesn’t do much for you. Any other comments, including bug reports and contributions are of course welcome as well.