Ephemeral Cartography_Junior E-Studio

Creating a Map of the City

In Junior Environments studio, our first exercise is to design a “map” of Pittsburgh, presenting ephemeral information about the city in a visually intriguing way.

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We came up with different candidate ideas for the first class. I brought few ideas on to the table, and then realized many of them were not about the city, but an individual, which is irrelevant to the goal. Information about a location or time of the day one wants the time to go slower is an example. I also had an idea of the location / amount of shadows in the city during the day, which I became interested in during the summer while trying to run away from the sunlight, but I couldn’t feel much passion about it.

Feeling stuck, I decided to take a different approach towards the prompt. Rather than trying to find a data, and then forcing it to fit a purpose it was not meant for, I started thinking primarily about what value the data I choose will bring to its users.

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I set my goal as helping people navigate through Pittsburgh, and then narrowed down to a service that provides safety information at night regarding light brightness and street traffic data.

Then I was going through different infographic references and came up with the initial visualization idea.

Inspirations from infographic collections

Initial rough visualization of light and people’s traffic on a path. Vertical lines are lights and horizontal lines are people’s movement paths. The lines will be moving in animation.

Feedback —

Build on the visualization.
How would a person orient themselves in this visualization of the street?
How would the transition from a map to this view look like?

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The reality of light intensity and people’s movement

Abstract visualization — added a feature where a person’s path of movement would fade away depending on the amount of time passed.

Iterations for map visualization

Sketch of transition from a map to the “panorama” street view. Order is top left and right, bottom left and right

The space where this visualization will be living in was decided. In order to assist people in navigating, according to the prevalent practices of orientation and traveling to places, a mobile app seemed most reasonable.

Regarding its context, I received feedback such as the visualization being too abstract and unfriendly. Its position in the spectrum of literal and abstract was not appropriate for constant and frequent usage.

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I looked for variations of warmer and more friendlier visualization of light. Below are some inspirations that I looked at as reference in order to calibrate my work’s position in the spectrum of abstract and literal, and its temperature.

Giant Ant - Costa - Fix Florida

Forms In Nature - Chromosphere LA

Regarding the intended function and the feasibility in terms of time that I have until the deadline, it was most reasonable to implement it in an existing platform and I started looking at mobile maps I will be integrating this visualization into.

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I looked at variety of map apps and searched for platform most appropriate to integrate my visualization into. I ended up choosing Google Maps due to its dark-mode for the nights and walking feature. Most of other applications were highly focused on driving and didn’t have visual mode specific for the night.

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As I continued calibrating between abstract and literal, I intended to put emphasis on making safer / active route more attractive than trying to make the relatively darker and vacant route unpleasant.

Sonaria - Chromosphere LA

I decided to create a collaborative scenery by using metaphor of nature. Giving active forms to describe amount of people in the area, and static forms to the lights in the space.

One big improvement from previous iteration I appreciate was how this visualization presents something that is linear (number of people, light intensity) into richer environment. As the number of people or the intensity of the light increase, it’s not just one element crowding the view, but generating diverse components creating a scenery.

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I created a mock up of how it might look like in context.

1. user would be able to switch the mode from normal Google Maps night view to see the visualization.
2. They would be able to “pre-walk” the possible routes and determine which way would suit their needs the best, whether it’s safety, number of people, or quietness.
3. As they walk they would be able to see their surroundings in the eye of the visualization.

Throughout this project, I was frequently wondering if I am taking the right steps needed and listening to the feedbacks that are given. It seems like I need to develop confidence and stronger reasoning for the choices I make.

Specifically about this project, given more time, I would have tried integrating the visualization in a different context, such as a function for kiosks in public spaces to be activated at night. I am glad that I was able to dive into the iterating process early on. However, I slowed down nearing the end of the project due to losing motivation from not being able to fully execute ideas I had because of time constraint.