SEE, THINK , WONDER - PART ii

Rasagya is a Map Designer at Mapbox, this means he is the one who ascertains the way map should look, feel and speak. What better person to get to access the maps I made! ( I did not reveal to him though that these maps were my creations, lest he felt pressurised to be nice to me!)
I used See, Think, Wonder on these maps too. The idea being, if maps speak to you at first glance, what are they saying?

As stated in my previous post the other reasons for using this See, Think, Wonder was to ascertain -

• If these maps are effective as visual aids for the purpose they are designed for (awareness of one's neighbourhood in this case) 
• What are the possible interventions to improve them? 
• What are good practices in these maps that can be used as future references? 
• What works for and against these maps as visual aids.

We started off by colour coding our paper as Blue= See. Yellow = Think. Pink = Wonder. 

Here is a picture of Rasagya studying my maps. 

What he saw: I see school buses, parks, cars, colourful & grey houses that I relate to. 
I see important places in Cooke Town. 
I see some roads coloured yellow and some white.
I see the colours in some buildings catching my attention. 
I see a hot dog cart that is like other roadside carts and autos. 
I see names of some roads and places.

What he thought: 

I think the map is colourful and eye-catching and the icons are working well as cartoons. 
I think I would like to go look for some of the pretty buildings in Cooke Town. Colourful Icons = Intriguing 
I think the lack of trees and house icons on the west of the map make me feel it is empty and has no buildings. 
I think roads and places should have different labels like Milton Street Park looks like the name of the street. 
I think icons of places will be useful to anchor the journey of the kids. 
I think the yellow roads are for the big yellow buses and white roads are for smaller cars. 
I think some parks without green areas is confusing ( Like Milton streets Cooke Town Park).

What he wondered: I wonder if the repeated house icons will be confusing.
I wonder if the buildings look like the icons on the map. 
I wonder if the colour and B&W icons have any meaning?
I wonder which parks have only trees and which have swings and if kids can differentiate between the two. 
I wonder if the child will be able to realise where s/he is due to fewer landmarks around the map.

My takeaways from Rasagya’s thoughts:

Visual appeal 

1. I think Rasagya saw exactly what I wanted a child to see! 
2. That the important places of Cooke Town stand out, is a win, more so as this is a neighbourhood map. 
3. Cooke Town is a combination of wide and narrow roads, this is a mark of old Bangalore, this speciality was visible too. 
4. That he noticed the parks, autos, and school buses marked the map (common sights in the region) is also a sign that the iconography used was successful. 

Navigational goals

1. Rasagya thinking that the icons are helping the map is another good sign. Icons making the place intriguing and worth exploring is exactly what I wanted the map to do. I wanted the map to aid children to explore their neighbourhood! 
2. However, I don’t know how successful this map will be for the purpose of exploration, as Rasagya also points out that the roads and places have been labelled alike. This is a cause for concern. A map should ground the user to his location, and help them differentiate between places, or else it will result in confusion. 
3. That the western side of the map feels incomplete is another cause for concern, this means the user will be lost in this region. 
4. That parks need to be depicted as green spaces is another valid suggestion. I also like the idea of adding a swing to differentiate parks with play areas. This allows for the clever use of iconography to differentiate between places of play available to the child. 
5. The lack of landmarks is a valid concern, and hence defeats the purpose of this map being a navigational tool in its current form.

Anchoring a place

1. Cooke Town is a mix of old colonial bungalows and newer structures. That there was an immediate visual differentiation possible due to use of colour vs B&W buildings is a good thing. However, the repetition of these icons has resulted in confusion. 
2. Maybe adding a legend to this map is a good idea as this way one could depict wide vs.narrow, roads, new vs old buildings, play vs walk parks etc. It will also be an interesting means to bring the old and the new in visual symphony with one another. 
3. Using anchoring landmarks like shops, schools, churches, bakeries, parks etc is crucial to adding navigational usability, and locational accuracy of this map. 

To conclude, this map worked well with iconography and immediate recognition of the area. It also succeeded in creating a sense of interest due to the use of colour. But it fails in its role as a neighbourhood map, as it does not list out important landmarks, thereby failing to provide a sense of direction/location to the user.

I need to work on Point 1 that I listed in ‘What makes a good map’ - Be true to the context (neighbourhood) and try to include as much information around the context.

In my next post, I will write about ways to successfuly use of iconography in maps, and how much iconography is too much. This discussion will be based on the examination of the book ‘Maps’ by Aleksandra Mizielinska & Daniel Mizielinski which I conducted with Arun and Upendra.