Final presentation

Tourist map prototype

Finally, we used the following maps for our research.

As you may notice, the only difference between the two is the gap in the red route. This gap hopefully is enough to subconsciously guide the user to take a route that follows this line.

Furthermore, the main points of our maps are:

• The 2D-mini map of the centre
  In order to avoid cluttering the main map with a lot of names, the mini map was added so tourists interested in street names can still look for them. The minimap also includes a
• Different icon styles for the interesting spots
  1. All the monuments and interesting buildings (churches, city hall and the eastern gate) are depicted by a simplified silhouette.
  2. The shops are indicated by what they might sell, along with the depiction of a price tag to indicate that people can shop there.
  3. The museums are indicated by an icon of a painting (hopefully indicating a certain degree of museum-ness) and a depiction of something typical in the museum.

Research conclusions

Sixteen participants, age 20-80, were asked to give their opinion as well as to answer the 2 stated research questions.

After showing them both maps for about ten seconds, 19% noticed the difference of the gap in the route. All of these participants were students. We can deem this to be acceptable. Like in ‘change blindness’ experiments, there is always a percentage of people (those with good short term memory refresh rates) that notice the change immediately.

After being shown one of the maps, 75% of the participants followed the route indicated by the red line. Argumentations to go in a certain direction were found to be:

just follow the route like it is meant to be (25%)
nice spots to start/ end with (museum/churches/shops) (44%)
first spot is the closest by vs. further away  (12.5%)
false differences (picture sharpness)  (6%)
randomly chosen  (12.5%)

Looking at the above, most of the participants following the line state that they had other reasons for choosing that direction (66% of the participants following that line). However, we see this as a succes of our use of the red line, since we believe that most of the participants were subconsciously influenced towards that choice by the line itself.

The following critics were posed by the partcipants:

• puppet is walking to the left in the right route  (6%)
• musea & shop content  interpreted quite well  (75%)
• no attention paid to mini map & route length unclear  (88%)
• route length interpreted as street lentgh  (6%)
• buildings (except heart)& dress icons interpreted well  (94%)

Conclusion

The difference was hardly noticed. The amount of people that noticed it, can be considered acceptable. Diminishing the gap line might lead to less people noticing, but this has the disadvantage that the line could be seen as one shape if the gap is too small.

The icons of Nusantara, horse and tank need some improvement. The Nusantara icon could be clarified by addition of the word ‘museum’. The tank is expected to be misinterpreted for the reason that the contrast in the phrase ‘war museum’ is low (red on blue). This could be solved by placing the text on the white background next to the canal.

Further adjustments will be made regarding the little map; its relevance is doubted, since so many people even seemed to notice it. For the estimation of the route length, the upper map was used. Although further research is necessary to support a decision, it was therefore chosen to leave this map out. The route length (completed with the word 3 km route)  and walking puppet will be included in the main map.

Also, in accordance to people’s tendency to focus on details, the left part of the map with little sights of note was left out. The main part of the map, around the route now takes up most of the map, allowing people to view important information from even further away.
This also allows the street names to be inserted in the main map. In relation to the rest of the map, they are now smaller, making the map less cluttered. They still should be quite readable from around 3 meters though, making them sufficiently useful for tourists needing street names.

Redesign

The following is our redesign, based on the above remarks.

Refinements part 2

In order to create a more coherent picture, the shopping items were reduced in size. Also more icons for catering spots were added, to enrich the information about the route. A 2D map was added in the left lower corner, for the communication of street names and route length.

This concept will be tested bysending emails to friends who are unfamiliar with Delft. In an instruction, the following tasks will be described;

1. ‘Have a look at the pictures below. Do you see any conspicuous differences between these two maps? If so, please describe them.’

…………………………………………………………………..

2. ‘Imagine you are going to visit Delft for shopping and visiting musea. Which route do you choose, A or B? Please do not refine the answer you posed in question 1. ‘

………………………………………………………………….

Refinements

Concluding from a coach session with Frans van Mourik, main points of improvement are considered:

• gap in the way looks like a dead end
• photos are not inviting enough, contrast also low in most of them
• the city atmosphere, recently reflected by the houses in the layout, the should be implemented in  and reflected by the photos in the spots
• the lines between the eye frames and the spots form an extra (undesirable) step for the brain
• contrast of the train icon is too low (black on red)
• inefficient use of space: eyes cover too much space
• canal lines and eye-lines are misleading: the brain is inclined to follow them, where they are only meant to help forming an image of the city
• delft blue houses are from Amsterdam

picture: commented design

While changing the style of the spot visualizations, we chose to throw out the ‘eyes on lines’ and use miniature buildings. After experimenting with the perspective, the buildings were nicely popping out and creating a more relaxed city overview. Instead of photo’s, bicolored abstract pictures were used for the buildings.

For the musea, interesting aspects were chosen to put in a painting frame. All figures are positioned directly at the spot. A more fluent gap in the route was made as an indication of continuity of the street.

More lively bridge icons are used, as well as additional shopping icons.

picture: adjusted design

Still, the balance of the icons together has to be improved. It seems to many categories are now used. With colors and grouping items (like the picture frames form the group of musea icons) we will try to adjust this little mess.

PS we have some problems with theresolution of the pictures in Firefox. If you see them still vague, please use Explorer as your web browser.

Concept presentation

We’ve created a concept for the tourist maps. Below we’ll explain how the concept was created, step by step. We’ll also discuss some of the choices we have made.

Try-outs

This week we experienced with a few variables of the map. First, the decision was made to go for a top view. A kind of 2,5D perspective picture with outstanding buildings was concluded to provide too little insight to the actual route, for it was partly covered by the buildings.

First update: introduction, orientation & inspiration

Introduction

Hereby Sophie and I (Bruno) present our first update on our second assignment of the Visual Communication Design master course at the Delft Technical University. For those not informed or who stumbled upon here by an odd combination of search words, the assignment is to create two version of a publicly displayed tourist map of Delft in the Netherlands.