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.

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. ‘

………………………………………………………………….

• 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.

Process steps

• required information
• perspective
• direction indication
• visualization of sightseeing spots

1. Required information

What is the necessary information on a tourist map of Delft? Below we have a list of requirements that all should be visible on the map, in order to provide a clear picture to the tourist of the centre of Delft:

Visible closeby (1,5 meter):

• The most important roads and canals
  
• The recommended walking route through the centre
  
• Interesting spots in the centre (both cultural and commercial)
  
• An indication of what can be found at the spots
  
• A direction in which to start the route

Visible from 10 meters away:

• it’s about a city route & hotspots

We can also make a distinction between interesting spots on the route and interesting spots outside of it. Whether this is necessary is up to the requirements of an actual client, but we’re lacking one. So we’ll go with whatever seems most appropriate in the final design step after this concept generation.

2. Perspective

Flat 2D maps have the problem that the details of what they depict suffers. A mountain is flat, high and low buildings seem the same and special, interesting features are reduced to mere abstract representations.

A map taken into perspective has the benefit that you can depict certain pieces of information in a more clear and dynamic way. You can depict the height of certain spots and special landmarks can be made clear by depicting them in a flat manner, to contrast with the perspective. For the tourist map, this should provide a better insight of the centre of Delft than a flat 2D map. We’ll test this below to see if we are correct.

Hypothesis : An angle of perspective will provide clearer insight than using a top view.

Conclusion:
What we see above is that special features on the map are indeed clearer. Their flat representations seem to jump out from the perspective map. The perspective itself also give a more ‘natural’ indication of the distance between points.

However, a real problem with these kinds of maps is that the information you can show becomes limited. When showing features in this manner, the map can quickly become cluttered and the route and street become blocked from view. This doesn’t aid the tourist in finding his way around Delft at all.

3. Direction indication

Prompting the tourist to go in a certain direction, means that the map should give this suggestion without being too obvious. The tourist should think that he made the decision on his own without influence.

So, we were searching for an unobtrusive way of giving the tourist a direction in which to start walking. Below you’ll see examples of semantic variations:

Conclusion:
Making a gap the ‘loop point’ of the route, immediately triggers the tourist’s attention to ‘follow the line’. They will naturally be inclined to walk in that way. In order to let the tourist walk the other way, we just have to create a gap at the other side of the ‘loop point’.

This change is small, especially considering the rich information on the final map that will stay the same. If you combine this with change blindness, the fact that people will not readily notice changes in a picture if they’re not focused explicitly on that change, makes this way a good candidate for an unnoticed suggestion of the walking direction.

4. Visualization of sightseeing spots

To visualize the hot spots of Delft, we tried the following methods:

• Circles with photos depicting  a picture of the hot spot
• Eyes with photos depicting a picture of the hot spot and indicating that the tourist should look there
• Icons depicting the category of the hot spot.

Below we’ll show some experiments of the above methods.

Photo circles

Photo eyes

Icons

So far, the eyes seem appealing. They ‘speak’ to the tourist that the place is worth looking at. However, from just the eyes and the photo’s it isn’t always clear what kind of hot spot is pointed out.

Icons solve this problem by providing a clear category of the hot spot. However, a map with only icons isn’t very interesting to look at either and would probably put the user off.

So we’ll try them both together.

Icons and eyes together

Conclusion:
The options with the eyes, combined with little icons seems to be the most appealing.

Final concept

From the above, we now have the following concept which we’ll pursue and improve.

Intended direction

Four ways to express the way to follow the route path:

arrow

gap

spot density

spot size

Decision - the gap seems to be the most subtle &  still stimulating hint.

Rich information

To visualize the highlights of the city, we thought of making peek-throughs with photos.

Also a few explorations were done with different icons.

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.

The maps will both be displayed at the railway station of Delft on alternating days. Both will display the map of the centre of Delft, displaying both interesting cultural hot spots and nice commercial aspects, such as interesting shops or good places to get a drink. A good route past these spots is presented.
Both the maps should appear to be the same when glanced at (the route is the same on both maps), but one version of the map should entice the tourists to ‘start left’, where there are more cultural highlights. The other version of the map should prompt the tourists to ‘start right’, where they are taken past most commercial spots first.

The distinction should be made through clever manipulation of the visual processing in the human brain. By using several tricks, we ‘force’ the tourist to focus on either the left or the right route, without him actually noticing the difference between versions of the map.

Orientation and Inspiration

To look at what other people have done and how other maps are made, we looked up all kinds of maps and looked at what we liked or disliked about them. The results are below.

Pro: The style is nice, with the antique look appealing to tourists that visit Delft for the cultural aspects.
Con: The style does nothing to enhance the presence of commercial hot spots in Delft.

Pro: The angled photo gives a good insight of the scenery. The signs are a clear indication of something interesting at a spot.
Cons: No clear route can be discerned and the signs don’t clearly indicate at which exact spot they point.

Pro: Displays a nice angle of the area, provides clear insight with the signs and how they point. Also, the more abstract view clarifies everything. You can also estimate relative distances between places rather well at the front.
Cons: Near the back, the distance estimation suffers. The color scheme appears childish and game-ish. Features can block the view of other interesting points.

Pro: The street map with overlayed interesting building is very clear.
Cons: The building are shown at an inflated, confusing size. The low contrast of names versus the background color make it an unclear map, the map doesn’t end at the sides, making the middle seem less important, the buildings are displayed poorly and non-appealing and the color scheme is dull.

Pro: The street map with overlayed interesting building is very clear. Only necessary street names (and perhaps even streets) are displayed. The buildings are visually pleasing and clear (due to the line thickness), the use of colors (especially the dashes of green for the park) make the map appear fresh. Because the map is clearly bounded (non-interesting water is cut off and whitened) the actual area looks more interesting.

Pro: Nice colors :) Also, the graphical style is fun.

Pro: The pins look nice and modern. The shadows add a dynamic feel to the map. The angled viewpoint of the area is interesting.

This map also gave us the idea to use shadows to distinguish between two map versions. Giving the ‘important’ parts shadows creates a focus on them, while not overly distinguishing them from other parts.

More inspiration

Finally, we went looking for interesting icon styles, to see if we can use the recognizability to our advantage. We also looked for styles that seems interesting. The icons below are examples of either styles that are recognizable or just fun and they serve as inpiration.

This concludes our first update.