Here the relevant theory from the book Colin Ware’s ‘Visual Thinking for Design’ will be described concerning our design of the map.
Standing-out: color
The bright color (orange) shopping icons stand out with the cool (blue) background. The dark blue museum icons are less outstanding, but it color reflects the Delft’s Blue identity. This is based on the Chromatic contrast [CH 4] to distinguish and emphasize the difference of grouping in the icons. The shopping icons looks different but shares the same color, which gives the information of being a group, while each location provides its unique activity.
Elongation
Elongation (which is actually an effect of the orientation in standing or lying icons) was perceived, to indicate difference. During the test some subjects indicated this as one of the first differences between the two maps. The lying and standing icon was not clear, this can be improved by adding cast shadow and more perspective techniques on the icons. The latter one will improve the standing out effect of the icons from the background and the map and also the effect of creating depth when the icons are lying down on the map.
CH3: Generalized contour
General Contour is used to indicate the churches as landmarks in a simplified way. These two landmarks were very effective and attractive due its styling on the map. By simplifying the churches to its contour the test subjects perceived a simplified identification of those two recognizable buildings, knowing that these two are important landmarks in Delft.
CH3: Spatial Layout
Spatial Layout gave an extra emphasize on the grouping of the two icon groups. The space it took was perceived to be related to the amount of activity occurred on that location. So the more they were clustered, the more the people perceived to engage in a location with more activities. So clustered icons would attract more people to go to that place.
CH5: Size gradients not used on the icons which has the effect that the museums farther away are bigger than the museums close to you (the ones lower on the map), although the size of the icons are exactly the same. We did not consider making different sized icons, because it can also be misinterpreted due its importance to the city or other ranking characteristics.
CH5: perspective through texture gradients is the technique we applied to make the map look 3D.
CH5: height on the picture plane
Heigh on the picture plane is the basic to show that the location indicated by the icon is further away then the location of icons closer to you.
The railway and the canal are used for the orientation of the map from the point of where the user stands. These two gives the boundary of the city center map. The railway is shown in the well-known pattern used also on the general maps. The canal is indicated with a light blue color which is used as the color for water in general maps.
The perspective of the two maps are different, which was a experiment to test if a specific perspective can make the user become more favoring to a certain direction (left or right from the starting station) as another. This has not yet proven clearly, but during our small user test it gave indication about whether or not one perspective is leading them toward the center or away from the center.
We got twenty participants for this test. The data is documented in this table for the further study.
