Making sense of maps
-
0:00 - 0:03What I do is I organize information. I'm a graphic designer.
-
0:03 - 0:06Professionally, I try to make sense
-
0:06 - 0:10often of things that don't make much sense themselves.
-
0:10 - 0:12So my father might not understand what it is
-
0:12 - 0:14that I do for a living.
-
0:14 - 0:16His part of my ancestry has been farmers.
-
0:16 - 0:19He's part of this ethnic minority called the Pontic Greeks.
-
0:19 - 0:24They lived in Asia Minor, and fled to Greece
-
0:24 - 0:26after a genocide about a hundred years ago,
-
0:26 - 0:29and ever since that, migration has somewhat been
-
0:29 - 0:30a theme in my family.
-
0:30 - 0:35My father moved to Germany, studied there, and married,
-
0:35 - 0:39and as a result, I now have this half-German brain
-
0:39 - 0:41with all the analytical thinking
-
0:41 - 0:45and that slight dorky demeanor that comes with that.
-
0:45 - 0:48And of course it meant that I was a foreigner in both countries,
-
0:48 - 0:51and that of course made it pretty easy for me
-
0:51 - 0:55to migrate as well, in good family tradition, if you like.
-
0:55 - 0:58But of course, most journeys that we undertake
-
0:58 - 1:01from day to day are within a city, and especially
-
1:01 - 1:04if you know the city, getting from A to B
-
1:04 - 1:08may seem pretty obvious, right?
-
1:08 - 1:12But the question is, why is it obvious?
-
1:12 - 1:14How do we know where we're going?
-
1:14 - 1:16So I washed up on a Dublin ferry port
-
1:16 - 1:20about 12 years ago, a professional foreigner, if you like,
-
1:20 - 1:23and I'm sure you've all had this experience before, yeah?
-
1:23 - 1:27You arrive in a new city, and your brain is trying
-
1:27 - 1:29to make sense of this new place.
-
1:29 - 1:33Once you find your base, your home,
-
1:33 - 1:37you start to built this cognitive map of your environment.
-
1:37 - 1:40It's essentially this virtual map that only exists
-
1:40 - 1:43in your brain. All animal species do it,
-
1:43 - 1:46even though we all use slightly different tools.
-
1:46 - 1:49Us humans, of course, we don't move around
-
1:49 - 1:52marking our territory by scent, like dogs.
-
1:52 - 1:57We don't run around emitting ultrasonic squeaks, like bats.
-
1:57 - 1:59We just don't do that,
-
1:59 - 2:04although a night in the Temple Bar district can get pretty wild. (Laughter)
-
2:04 - 2:08No, we do two important things to make a place our own.
-
2:08 - 2:11First, we move along linear routes.
-
2:11 - 2:14Typically we find a main street, and this main street
-
2:14 - 2:17becomes a linear strip map in our minds.
-
2:17 - 2:20But our mind keeps it pretty simple, yeah?
-
2:20 - 2:23Every street is generally perceived as a straight line,
-
2:23 - 2:27and we kind of ignore the little twists and turns that the streets make.
-
2:27 - 2:30When we do, however, make a turn into a side street,
-
2:30 - 2:34our mind tends to adjust that turn to a 90-degree angle.
-
2:34 - 2:37This of course makes for some funny moments
-
2:37 - 2:42when you're in some old city layout that follows some sort of
-
2:42 - 2:45circular city logic, yeah?
-
2:45 - 2:46Maybe you've had that experience as well, right?
-
2:46 - 2:50Let's say you're on some spot on a side street that projects
-
2:50 - 2:53from a main cathedral square, and you want to get to
-
2:53 - 2:57another point on a side street just like that.
-
2:57 - 3:02The cognitive map in your mind may tell you, "Aris,
-
3:02 - 3:05go back to the main cathedral square, take
-
3:05 - 3:08a 90-degree turn, and walk down that other side street."
-
3:08 - 3:10But somehow you feel adventurous that day,
-
3:10 - 3:15and you suddenly discover that the two spots
-
3:15 - 3:18were actually only a single building apart.
-
3:18 - 3:20Now, I don't know about you, but I always feel like I find
-
3:20 - 3:25this wormhole or this inter-dimensional portal.
-
3:25 - 3:28So we move along linear routes
-
3:28 - 3:33and our mind straightens streets and perceives turns
-
3:33 - 3:35as 90-degree angles.
-
3:35 - 3:37The second thing that we do to make a place our own
-
3:37 - 3:42is we attach meaning and emotions to the things
-
3:42 - 3:45that we see along those lines.
-
3:45 - 3:49If you go to the Irish countryside, and you ask an old lady
-
3:49 - 3:53for directions, brace yourself for some elaborate
-
3:53 - 3:57Irish storytelling about all the landmarks. Yeah?
-
3:57 - 4:00She'll tell you the pub where her sister used to work,
-
4:00 - 4:03and go past the church where I got married, that kind of thing.
-
4:03 - 4:07So we fill our cognitive maps with these markers of meaning.
-
4:07 - 4:11What's more, we abstract,
-
4:11 - 4:13repeat patterns, and recognize them.
-
4:13 - 4:16We recognize them by the experiences,
-
4:16 - 4:19and we abstract them into symbols.
-
4:19 - 4:22And of course, we are all capable
-
4:22 - 4:25of understanding these symbols. (Laughter)
-
4:25 - 4:29What's more, we're all capable of understanding
-
4:29 - 4:32the cognitive maps, and you are all capable
-
4:32 - 4:36of creating these cognitive maps yourselves.
-
4:36 - 4:39So next time, when you want to tell your friend how to get to your place,
-
4:39 - 4:42you grab a beermat, grab a napkin,
-
4:42 - 4:46and you just observe yourself create this awesome piece
-
4:46 - 4:50of communication design. It's got straight lines.
-
4:50 - 4:53It's got 90 degree corners.
-
4:53 - 4:55You might add little symbols along the way.
-
4:55 - 4:58And when you look at what you've just drawn,
-
4:58 - 5:04you realize it does not resemble a street map.
-
5:04 - 5:06If you were to put an actual street map
-
5:06 - 5:09on top of what you've just drawn, you'd realize your streets
-
5:09 - 5:13and the distances, they'd be way off.
-
5:13 - 5:15No, what you've just drawn
-
5:15 - 5:19is more like a diagram or a schematic.
-
5:19 - 5:23It's a visual construct of lines, dots, letters,
-
5:23 - 5:26designed in the language of our brains.
-
5:26 - 5:31So it's no big surprise that the big information design icon
-
5:31 - 5:36of the last century, the pinnacle of showing everybody
-
5:36 - 5:40how to get from A to B, the London Underground map,
-
5:40 - 5:44was not designed by a cartographer or a city planner.
-
5:44 - 5:49It was designed by an engineering draftsman.
-
5:49 - 5:53In the 1930s, Harry Beck applied the principles of
-
5:53 - 5:57schematic diagram design, and changed
-
5:57 - 6:01the way public transport maps are designed forever.
-
6:01 - 6:05Now the very key to the success of this map
-
6:05 - 6:09is in the omission of less important information
-
6:09 - 6:11and in the extreme simplification.
-
6:11 - 6:16So straightened streets, corners of 90 and 45 degrees,
-
6:16 - 6:22but also the extreme geographic distortion in that map.
-
6:22 - 6:26If you were to look at the actual locations of these stations,
-
6:26 - 6:28you'd see they're very different. Yeah?
-
6:28 - 6:33But this is all for the clarity of the public tube map.
-
6:33 - 6:36Yeah? If you, say, wanted to get from Regent's Park Station
-
6:36 - 6:39to Great Portland Street, the tube map would tell you,
-
6:39 - 6:44take the tube, go to Baker Street, change over, take another tube.
-
6:44 - 6:48Of course, what you don't know is that the two stations
-
6:48 - 6:51are only about a hundred meters apart.
-
6:51 - 6:54Now we've reached the subject of public transport,
-
6:54 - 6:56and public transport here in Dublin
-
6:56 - 7:01is a somewhat touchy subject. (Laughter)
-
7:01 - 7:04For everybody who does not know the public transport here in Dublin,
-
7:04 - 7:07essentially we have this system of local buses
-
7:07 - 7:11that grew with the city. For every outskirt that was added,
-
7:11 - 7:13there was another bus route added running
-
7:13 - 7:17from the outskirt all the way to the city center,
-
7:17 - 7:22and as these local buses approach the city center,
-
7:22 - 7:25they all run side by side, and converge in pretty much
-
7:25 - 7:28one main street.
-
7:28 - 7:31So when I stepped off the boat 12 years ago,
-
7:31 - 7:34I tried to make sense of that,
-
7:34 - 7:40because exploring a city on foot only gets you so far.
-
7:40 - 7:45But when you explore a foreign and new public transport system,
-
7:45 - 7:48you will build a cognitive map in your mind
-
7:48 - 7:51in pretty much the same way.
-
7:51 - 7:56Typically, you choose yourself a rapid transport route,
-
7:56 - 8:00and in your mind this route is perceived as a straight line,
-
8:00 - 8:03and like a pearl necklace, all the stations and stops
-
8:03 - 8:07are nicely and neatly aligned along the line,
-
8:07 - 8:12and only then you start to discover some local bus routes
-
8:12 - 8:17that would fill in the gaps and that allow you for those
-
8:17 - 8:21wormhole, inter-dimensional portal shortcuts.
-
8:21 - 8:25So I tried to make sense, and when I arrived,
-
8:25 - 8:28I was looking for some information leaflets that would
-
8:28 - 8:31help me crack this system and understand it,
-
8:31 - 8:37and I found those brochures. (Laughter)
-
8:37 - 8:40They were not geographically distorted.
-
8:40 - 8:45They were having a lot of omission of information,
-
8:45 - 8:49but unfortunately the wrong information, say, in the city center.
-
8:49 - 8:54There were never actually any lines that showed the routes.
-
8:54 - 8:59There are actually not even any stations with names.
-
8:59 - 9:04Now the maps of Dublin transport, have gotten better,
-
9:04 - 9:10and after I finished the project, they got a good bit better,
-
9:10 - 9:14but still no station names, still no routes.
-
9:14 - 9:19So, being naive, and being half-German, I decided,
-
9:19 - 9:22"Aris, why don't you build your own map?"
-
9:22 - 9:25So that's what I did. I researched how each
-
9:25 - 9:28and every bus route moved through the city,
-
9:28 - 9:32nice and logical, every bus route a separate line,
-
9:32 - 9:35and I plotted it into my own map of Dublin,
-
9:35 - 9:38and in the city center,
-
9:38 - 9:42I got a nice spaghetti plate. (Laughter)
-
9:42 - 9:48Now this is a bit of a mess, so I decided, of course,
-
9:48 - 9:52you're going to apply the rules of schematic design,
-
9:52 - 9:54cleaning up the corridors, widening the streets
-
9:54 - 9:58where there were loads of buses, and making the streets
-
9:58 - 10:02at straight, 90-degree corners, 45-degree corners, or fractions of that,
-
10:02 - 10:07and filled it in with the bus routes. And I built this city center
-
10:07 - 10:12bus map of the system, how it was five years ago.
-
10:12 - 10:14I'll zoom in again so that you get the full impact of
-
10:14 - 10:18the quays and Westmoreland Street. (Laughter)
-
10:18 - 10:27Now I can proudly say — (Applause) —
-
10:27 - 10:31I can proudly say, as a public transport map,
-
10:31 - 10:37this diagram is an utter failure — (Laughter) —
-
10:37 - 10:39except probably in one aspect:
-
10:39 - 10:42I now had a great visual representation
-
10:42 - 10:46of just how clogged up and overrun the city center really was.
-
10:46 - 10:49Now call me old-fashioned, right, but I think
-
10:49 - 10:53a public transport route map should have lines,
-
10:53 - 10:54because that's what they are. Yeah?
-
10:54 - 10:58They're little pieces of string that wrap their way
-
10:58 - 11:01through the city center, or through the city.
-
11:01 - 11:05If you will, the Greek guy inside of me feels, if I don't
-
11:05 - 11:09get a line, it's like entering the Labyrinth of the Minotaur
-
11:09 - 11:12without having Ariadne giving you the string to find your way.
-
11:12 - 11:16So the outcome of my academic research,
-
11:16 - 11:20loads of questionnaires, case studies,
-
11:20 - 11:25and looking at a lot of maps, was that a lot of the problems
-
11:25 - 11:28and shortcomings of the public transport system here in Dublin
-
11:28 - 11:31was the lack of a coherent public transport map --
-
11:31 - 11:33a simplified, coherent public transport map --
-
11:33 - 11:36because I think this is the crucial step to understanding
-
11:36 - 11:40a public transport network on a physical level,
-
11:40 - 11:42but it's also the crucial step to make
-
11:42 - 11:46a public transport network mappable on a visual level.
-
11:46 - 11:50So I teamed up with a gentleman called James Leahy,
-
11:50 - 11:53a civil engineer and a recent Master's graduate of
-
11:53 - 11:57the Sustainable Development Program at DIT,
-
11:57 - 12:01and together we drafted this simplified model network
-
12:01 - 12:04which I could then go ahead and visualize.
-
12:04 - 12:06So here's what we did.
-
12:06 - 12:11We distributed these rapid transport corridors
-
12:11 - 12:16throughout the city center, and extended them into the outskirts.
-
12:16 - 12:19Rapid, because we wanted them to be served
-
12:19 - 12:22by rapid transport vehicles, yeah?
-
12:22 - 12:25They would get exclusive road use, where possible,
-
12:25 - 12:28and it would be high-quantity, high-quality transport.
-
12:28 - 12:31James wanted to use bus rapid transport for that,
-
12:31 - 12:34rather than light rail. For me, it was important
-
12:34 - 12:38that the vehicles that would run on those rapid transport corridors
-
12:38 - 12:45would be visibly distinguishable from local buses on the street.
-
12:45 - 12:48Now we could take out all the local buses
-
12:48 - 12:51that ran alongside those rapid transport means.
-
12:51 - 12:54Any gaps that appeared in the outskirts were filled again.
-
12:54 - 12:58So, in other words, if there was a street in an outskirt
-
12:58 - 13:01where there had been a bus, we put a bus back in,
-
13:01 - 13:05only now these buses wouldn't run all the way to the city center
-
13:05 - 13:09but connect to the nearest rapid transport mode,
-
13:09 - 13:11one of these thick lines over there.
-
13:11 - 13:14So the rest was merely a couple of months of work,
-
13:14 - 13:17and a couple of fights with my girlfriend of our place
-
13:17 - 13:20constantly being clogged up with maps,
-
13:20 - 13:23and the outcome, one of the outcomes, was this map
-
13:23 - 13:28of the Greater Dublin Area. I'll zoom in a little bit.
-
13:28 - 13:32This map only shows the rapid transport connections,
-
13:32 - 13:35no local bus, very much in the Metro map style
-
13:35 - 13:39that was so successful in London, and that since
-
13:39 - 13:42has been exported to so many other major cities,
-
13:42 - 13:45and therefore is the language that we should use
-
13:45 - 13:48for public transport maps.
-
13:48 - 13:53What's also important is, with a simplified network like this,
-
13:53 - 13:56it now would become possible for me
-
13:56 - 13:59to tackle the ultimate challenge,
-
13:59 - 14:02and make a public transport map for the city center,
-
14:02 - 14:06one where it wouldn't just show rapid transport connections
-
14:06 - 14:09but also all the local bus routes, streets and the likes,
-
14:09 - 14:11and this is what a map like this could like.
-
14:11 - 14:15I'll zoom in a little bit.
-
14:15 - 14:21In this map, I'm including each transport mode,
-
14:21 - 14:26so rapid transport, bus, DART, tram and the likes.
-
14:26 - 14:32Each individual route is represented by a separate line.
-
14:32 - 14:37The map shows each and every station,
-
14:37 - 14:40each and every station name,
-
14:40 - 14:45and I'm also displaying side streets,
-
14:45 - 14:49in fact, most of the side streets even with their name,
-
14:49 - 14:53and for good measure, also a couple of landmarks,
-
14:53 - 14:56some of them signified by little symbols,
-
14:56 - 14:59others by these isometric three-dimensional
-
14:59 - 15:01bird's-eye-view drawings.
-
15:01 - 15:04The map is relatively small in overall size,
-
15:04 - 15:07so something that you could still hold as a fold-out map,
-
15:07 - 15:11or display in a reasonably-sized display box on a bus shelter.
-
15:11 - 15:15I think it tries to be the best balance
-
15:15 - 15:18between actual representation
-
15:18 - 15:24and simplification, the language of way-finding in our brain.
-
15:24 - 15:28So straightened lines, cleaned-up corners,
-
15:28 - 15:29and, of course, that very, very important
-
15:29 - 15:35geographic distortion that makes public transport maps possible.
-
15:35 - 15:37If you, for example, have a look at the two main
-
15:37 - 15:39corridors that run through the city,
-
15:39 - 15:41the yellow and orange one over here, this is how
-
15:41 - 15:44they look in an actual, accurate street map,
-
15:44 - 15:48and this is how they would look in my distorted,
-
15:48 - 15:51simplified public transport map.
-
15:51 - 15:55So for a successful public transport map,
-
15:55 - 15:56we should not stick to accurate representation,
-
15:56 - 15:59but design them in the way our brains work.
-
15:59 - 16:03The reactions I got were tremendous. It was really good to see.
-
16:03 - 16:06And of course, for my own self, I was very happy to see
-
16:06 - 16:10that my folks in Germany and Greece finally have an idea
-
16:10 - 16:16what I do for a living. (Laughter) Thank you. (Applause)
- Title:
- Making sense of maps
- Speaker:
- Aris Venetikidis
- Description:
-
Map designer Aris Venetikidis is fascinated by the maps we draw in our minds as we move around a city -- less like street maps, more like schematics or wiring diagrams, abstract images of relationships between places. How can we learn from these mental maps to make better real ones? As a test case, he remakes the notorious Dublin bus map. (Filmed at TEDxDublin)
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 16:36
Krystian Aparta commented on English subtitles for Making sense of maps | ||
Krystian Aparta edited English subtitles for Making sense of maps | ||
Krystian Aparta edited English subtitles for Making sense of maps | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for Making sense of maps | ||
Ariana Bleau Lugo accepted English subtitles for Making sense of maps | ||
Ariana Bleau Lugo edited English subtitles for Making sense of maps | ||
Meryl Ducray edited English subtitles for Making sense of maps | ||
Thu-Huong Ha approved English subtitles for Making sense of maps |
Krystian Aparta
The English transcript was updated on 11/6/2015.