Profvision's Blog

Final Design Pedestrian Map

karlarosales — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 20:02:54 +0000

Taking the results of the user tests into account, more work was put into the visualization of the map. The brightness of the colours was changed in order to accomplish an effect that let the icons stand out more. This appeared have more sense to us then making the icons much bigger than they were. We wanted to achieve more playfulness in the map and decided to make the icons sketchier. Creating many different icons, we could provide the tourists with a lot of information. Some of the participants gave comments that lead us to the impression that they missed something on the map. We wanted to fulfill this need with the various icons without overloading the maps with more and more icons, which would have looked just the same. The version of the map for the user test only had walking people as icons for the shopping route. These icons were integrated in both maps, but on the shopping map, their bags were coloured in red. To support the effect that these walking people guided the user through the city, the red colour was lost of its saturation, the further the icon was away from the starting point. Most participants did perceive a difference in the two maps and we wanted to avoid that. To achieve a higher consistency, we used the same walking people for both maps, removed their shopping bags and the colour effect. Instead we decided to develop symbols for the different shops. In this way we made the two maps more similar to each other. The logo that we used on the map for the user test was of a strong orange. We decided to change this for something less strong bit still noticeable because the attention should not be shifted away from the most important aspects of the map, which were the icons. To prevent confusions that we observed when the participants were asked to point the way that they would take with their fingers, we changed the shadows of the main street.

Figure 1. Final design of route K

Figure 2. Final design of route P

Final Design: User Test

karlarosales — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 17:14:50 +0000

First Part of the user Test: Welcome to LEIDEN.

Today, the first part of the the user test was performed in the city of Leiden, in front of the central station. That location was choose because we needed that the people who participate in the test were not familiar with Delft.

First respondent

• Both versions will be shown simultaneously to the respondent (show the maps only 10 seconds)? with the question: ‘Do you see any conspicuous differences between these two maps’ The answer has to be yes or no. If the answer is yes, ask the respondent to name the differences.

• Now show the same respondent only one version of the map. Ask him the following question: ‘You are going to visit Delft for shopping and visiting museums. Which route do you choose, route K or P?’ The respondent shouldn’t be aware that K stands for ‘Museum route’ and P for ‘shopping route’.

Second respondent

The procedure is the same as with the first respondent with the difference that now the other map is shown and the question asked is ‘You are going to visit Delft for visiting museums and shopping. Which route do you choose, route P or K?’

Final Design: Development after Feedback

karlarosales — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 17:09:08 +0000

After the feedback we discuss again our concept and decide to star changing a few things, just to star we began with:

A) ICONS: It was mandatory improve the icons for better understanding of the map. Just to show an example:

B) USE OF COLOR: Try to experiment with colors according with the chapter number four to emphasize the different elements.

Assignment 2: 2nd feedback session

ilo2o — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 23:52:39 +0000

After the feedback that we got in class, we took the opportunity to get more detailed feedback. We showed not only the first version of the concept, but as well concepts with first improvements. Here we present an excerpt of what we were told. We will try to make some changes, based on the very helpful comments and addtitionally on our first pilot tests.

Comparing the portrait and the landscape maps we did so far with each other, the museums seem less far on the map in landscape format. But the icons for museum that we have look a lot like temples from Athens, in a way. We should consider to develop other icons that represent museums. For example show, what is inside the museums, give triggers about the exhibitions which are going on.

The roads should be made more friendly and light. The use of warm colours was recommended to us to give the overall look of it a more inviting appearance. A positive aspect that was found by a designer about our map concept is, that it looks bright. As well the white lines give aesthetically something, but we should really be aware that the target group is pedestrians. In this context, the lines give the map in combination or more on top of the grey thicker lines, a depth that is overexegarated. We should question, whether the white lines are really necessary.

A very important advice was that we should at least some of the streets let expand until the station.

Now we had some feedback from the tutors and from first participants,

but your feedback is always welcome, too!

Assignment 2: Map color experimentation

karlarosales — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 22:54:37 +0000

Assignment 2: Pedestrian Map feedback!

karlarosales — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 22:44:35 +0000

After deliver the two concepts of the maps we had a two feedback session.

We receive the first comments of our concepts in the lecture room. In the first feed back session we could discover the following:

1) The colors are not effective. Some of the colors gave false cues to the users, for example the blue color used to the streets make the user think that they are water canals.

2) The contrast of the 3D icons versus the 2D icons is not as strong as we thought. Probably for the use of shading in the 2D icons. We were encouraged to experiment more with the icons, perhaps a 3d museum pedestrian in the museum route (as we have a 3d shopper pedestrian in the shoppping route).

3) We have to figure it our how to make the Museum route attractive because we have very few icons in that route and doesn’t show a clear path. So we have to guide our user to go in that way.

4) Change the concepts format to landscape perhaps?

well… we had a lot to think

Assignment 2: Pilot test

ilo2o — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 22:40:26 +0000

Additionally to the feedback we got in class and in an extra feedback meeting, we thought it would be a good time to conduct a pilot test in order to hear the opinion of the actual users of the end product: tourists. Therefore, tourists in Amsterdam who never went to Delft before, were asked to spend some of their touristing-time on supporting ambitious students on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

Here you can see the results of our pilot test

Comments of participant 1 (female, 23):
After presenting both maps simultaneously for 10 seconds, differences were perceived:
- there are women in 3 d
- one of the maps seems to be more crowded with icons

After presenting the museum map alone, longer:
- she would follow the museums, in order of decreasing size (but she was not aware of this
size effect!)

Participants 2 (male, 32)+3 (female, 28)
After presenting both maps simultaneously for 10 sec, elements that were standing out and made a difference by that:
- size of the symbols
- there were women on one of the maps
-one map seemed to be more logical, it seemed to show points of interest

Participant 2
After showing him the shopping map alone, longer:
- after seeing the map, he would íntuitively follow the women until the old church

Participants 3
- after seeing the map, she would íntuitively go one straight, then left, keep left and
turn right before Vermeer Centrum (she wouldn’t let herself be led by the woman icons at
all)
- she would like to see a tourist info office on the map
- she would like to see a central place, like a market or something on the map

We will try to take these comments into account during the changes that we will make for our concept of a map for Delft.

Conclusions:

- leading the direction the users take works with decreasing the size. We should stick with that

- we should work on the icons to achieve a more harmonized appearance. Maybe remove the 3d-idea

- we should make the two maps more similar to eachother in order to not let users see the difference between the museum- and the shopping route at a glance

- maybe other places of interest, like the tourist office could be added, but it is not included in our brief

Assignment 2: Map concept

karlarosales — Sun, 23 May 2010 21:54:50 +0000

CONCEPT B- Delft Museum route:

CONCEPT A - Delft shopping route:

Assignment 2: Concept Tourist Map Delft

ilo2o — Sun, 23 May 2010 19:44:07 +0000

These three images show one of our previous ideas. We planned to integrate the “D” of the Delft logo because the actual shape of the map and the route ressemble this letter anyway. We present several variations of the d-shape idea. In image number 3 we filled the innerside of the letter with the same colour. But we discovered that this way the contrasts were too high and too many together with the icons. In the end we decided not to stay with it because it seemed to be more distructive than else.

Assignment 2: Map design

karlarosales — Thu, 20 May 2010 20:04:13 +0000

Five Principles of Map Design: http://makingmaps.net/2008/02/05/more-principles-of-map-design/

Assignment 2: Infographics

ilo2o — Wed, 19 May 2010 21:49:44 +0000

Today we had a very interesting lecture held by Mrs Apituley, an information designer working at Mijksenaar. What she told us can be very useful for our assignment, she introduced the world of infographics to us. Showing many classical examples of the last century and examples of her firm, was inspiring. We found a lot of examples online which are connected with maps as well, going mostly with the restrictions we got

This one shows how to present a design approach “mapwise”

This one works a lot with colours and icons, it doesn’t use a key and fits our limitations with that

This one seems to fit our assignment a bit more, showing a part of a city, 2,5 dimensional houses on a plain ground

This one is way too crowded to be understandable for people, but that’s part of the message it communicates…

We also thought about icons that present the stops on the map best. Like Mrs. Apituley from Mijksenaar has shown in the lecture, there are icons that are more and icons that are less understandable. Which assoziatons do people have when seeing certain symbols? For example with the symbol for shopping, our first idea was to take shopping bags as shown in the post from 05/19/2010. These didn’t seem to be convincing enough, so we took cloth hangers into consideration. But they stand more for a wardrobe and not for shopping.

A shopping trolley is very popular, but not suitable for shopping in a city, more for a supermarket or a webshop. It was really hard to find a suitable symbol!

In the end, we decided to take a (maybe a bit sexistic but still clear) symbol of a woman, carrying two shopping bags. Further research with nine participants had shown that this is understandable and recognizable as a symbol for places where one can go shopping. As you will see in our concept, we decided to vary between a 2d and a 3d shape, but explanations for that will follow later on!

For the other icons we also did some trials in illustrator before deciding for the ones we will take for the concept for the user test. These examples are some of our trials for the museum icon.

A shopping trolley is very popular, but not suitable for shopping in a city, more for a supermarket or a webshop. It was really hard to find a suitable symbol! In the end, we decided to take the (maybe a bit sexistic but still clear) symbol of a woman, carrying two shopping bags. Further research with nine participants had shown that this is understandable and recognizable as a symbol for places where one can go shopping. As you will see in our concept, we decided to vary between a 2d and a 3d shape, but explanations for that will follow later on!

Assignment 2: Inspiration

karlarosales — Wed, 19 May 2010 21:31:48 +0000

So? what is a map?

examples:

this is the hand drawn map association: http://www.handmaps.org/index.php

The user: tourists.

so we are designing a pedestrian map…

simplicity and enough information for the user:

Assignment 2: Delft’s centre map

karlarosales — Wed, 19 May 2010 20:10:42 +0000

So, we reach to Assignment 2.

What? Design a map of the centre of Delft that it influences the behaviour of the users. We have to design to versions of the map (museum and shopping route).

Limiting conditions:

• The use of text on the map is not allowed, with the exception of names of buildings, museums, streets and squares (all in English).

• The use of de ‘Route line’ itself as indicator for direction is not allowed.

• The use of arrows or other arrowlike symbols as indicator for direction is not allowed.

• The names ‘Museum route’ and ‘shopping route’ should not be used on the map. You can refer to these routes by route K and route P.

• There will not be a key to symbols. All visual elements should speak for themselves.

• The subtle but effective differences have to be based on the theory presented in Colin Ware’s book.

Otherwise all kinds of static visualizations are allowed.

this is going to be interesting…

Assignment 1: little note

karlarosales — Wed, 19 May 2010 18:17:40 +0000

To finalize the poster blogging, we add a little translation to Willem poster.

we are waiting for your comments! thank you

Assignment 2: Concept Tourist Map Delft

willembuijs — Wed, 19 May 2010 11:55:08 +0000

So our goal is to design a map; a diagrammatic representation of an area of land or sea showing physical features, cities, roads etc. (Jewell and Abate, 2001). Our target group are pedestrians; persons who are walking along a road or a developed area (Jewell and Abate, 2001). These people need to be supported in their decisions of way finding because they are new to the area, which they are about to explore. Part of the assignment was a list of limiting conditions. It was forbidden to use text excessively, the ‘Route line’ itself or arrows as indicators for direction was not allowed. Furthermore, the names ‘Museum route’ and ‘shopping route’ should not be used on the map; it should be referred to them as by route K and route P. There should not be a key for the symbols; they need to speak for themselves. At large, the decisions taken in order to make subtle but effective differences should be adapted from the theory in Colin Ware’s book ‘Visual Thinking for Design’ (2008).

This is our first draft for the concept of the tourist map of Delft. This picture will only show the shopping route edition. By showing 3D shopping icons which will decrease in size from the start, we try to create a route.

Assignment 1: The posters

gniermeijer — Thu, 06 May 2010 22:39:57 +0000

Subject: “Bringing people together”

Sender: Marketing department of Gemeente Delft

Receiver: Citizens of Delft

The Composition,structure,grouping in 2D poster by Ilona:

The Color poster by Willem:

*translation of the poster text:

DELFT DIVIDED FOR 40 YEARS
RAIL MUST BE UNDERGROUND
After 40 years of being divided, it’s time to connect the city’s heart again. Where at first there was a clear separation, there will become the center of our beautiful city. Bring Delft together again and stop the tracks under the ground !

The Third dimension poster by Karla:

The narrative poster by Geert:

Hello world and fellow VCD’s!

willembuijs — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 15:12:28 +0000

From now on this will be our own Visual Communication Design Blog. We will upload and post all our finding during the coming quarter. Our group the Profvisions consist out of Karla, Ilona, Geert and Willem. Have fun reading this blog, hope you will find it interesting.