Introduction
Design process
-Exploration
-Analysis
-Ideation
-Experimentation
-Vision
-Concept
-User testing
Theoretical of visual perception
-Theory of the book
-Theory applied effectively
Final Design
Critical Review
-Team 20: VeCieDie
-Team 27: C.A.L.L.
Reflection
Introduction
In this report we describe the process for designing two posters for the Delft municipality. The assignment is to design two posters which each direct the visitors to a certain direction, one toward the museums and another to the shopping area. Two explore the visual communication we have the theory of Colin Ware to back up. In the following you will read about our analysis, selection of focus, idea generation, concept creation and the final results.
Exploration
Information search
At the very beginning, we wanted to find out any information related to this area and we wondered that are there some existing maps or graphics can help us to finish the mission better.
We firstly started searching in internet. We went to www.delft.nl, the official website of Delft, and got a city map for tourists, introduction about Museum as well as other places of interests. But details about shopping, food are still limited. In this case, maps.google.com is a good resource for back up. We found out most of shops in Google map by typing keywords ‘Delft shops’ and ‘Delft restaurants’. Secondly, several maps of Delft with different themes, both new and old, were collected from internet, too. The collected information serves as input for our ideation and what we select to show on our map.
Delft shops
Delft food
Delft city tour
Although it was clear that there were mainly museums in the first half of the 'Museum route' and the second part was more for retail business, and restaurants, we still didn't know clearly what the museums look like, what kinds of shops or restaurants are worth having a visit.
In this case, we decided to start from Delft central station and traveled along the ‘museum route’ to gain firsthand experience about this area. We toured the route by bicycle on 30th May. During the tour, we took photos and marked the location on a map. In addition, we found some interesting details in this zone. Finally, according to the tour, we selected 4 museums and 4 places of entertainment to make icons in the map.
Analysis
Railway and river
According to the limiting conditions, using of 'Route line' itself as indicator for directional guidance is not allowed. In order to let them know where the boundary of the city center is, we decided to use two obvious landmark to indicate that boundary on two sides. The rail beside Phoenixstraat and river Rijn-Schiekanaal which can be seen easily by visitors, these two indications shows the visitor roughly in which the direction they should go for the city center.
Cultural treasures (museums)
For the cultural treasures part, Leger, Paul Tétar van Elven, Nusantara and Het Prinsenhof museum were our choice not only because they are well known, but also because they laid proportionately along the Phoenixstraat which might lead people to the ‘Museum route’.
The old and new churches are also buildings that we need to draw in the design. When we stood in front of the central station and faced the direction of Delft city center, we easily noticed that they stand out in the skyline of the city. So we thought that these churches could be used as landmark to show the orientation for visitors in our map.
In the old church, a small detail inspired us about the icon design of this landmark. They are very simple but very recognizable icon of the old church which was carved on bronze rivets that surrounded this building. We want to design graphics with this style to make a connection between our design and culture of Delft.
Flower market
Flower market is a tradition in Delft which attracts a lot of visitors and local people. It’s full of fresh food, beautiful flowers and fun. For this reason, we will give icon for this activity in map.
Beestenmarkt
It was a square that is surrounded by 5 or 6 restaurants. When we have been there, hundreds of visitor is sitting there with glasses of beer and famous apple pies. And we thought here is one of the biggest places for people to eat and drink in Delft which we want to put icon of food around here. The ambiance is unique at this square and worth to share with new visitors.
Shops
There are two kinds of shops in delft, one is souvenir shop and the other is mainly selling clothes and shoes. The former one is located around the square of new church and the latter one is placed closed to the square area. So we are going to divide these two kind of shops with different icon and place them in the area close to eachother.
Ideation
Idea 1: Use cartoony style to emphasize the characteristics of the city centre; this can indicate the local activity. Here below, you can see an example of what we had in mind. This is communicative and attractive in it own sense.
Idea 2: Put the map in perspective and mix with 3 dimensional landmarks on the map to ease the usage for the user. See picture below for a good example made by Peter Reid, 2004. The perspective view also has the effect of how the user holds the map and therefore certain focus is made of where one chose their direction. This idea is functional in essence.
Idea 3: Use an angular rotation with a strong perspective to create a more exiting map which makes the user looks into a certain direction. That direction should be the one the user choose to start his route of exploration in the Delft city centre. Outstanding color and a blur not in the line, but applied on the whole map to emphasize the effect.
Idea 4: Out of the box thinking brought us to an idea which is based on how some people remember a route. Or how people explain a route to another person, which is by indicating or describing a landmark where a certain action of taking left/right should occur. This made us go experimenting on placing images in a sequential way. This is of course not a map, but it has the same function when you only take in account to navigate on one defined route.
Idea 5: Use of 2D map to get overview and the intention of 3D directive influence. It was a very difficult and complex idea to integrate a photorealistic foreground which blends into a 3D partial city front. And also smoothly make it turn into a folded 2D map of the rest of the city centre. Here under a very rough visualization is given, which already indicates the problems of blending these three elements into one object. The intention is to make the viewer feel really stand before the city and facing into a certain direction. He subconsciously are directed to a certain route.
Experimentation
For several ideas the functionality (semantics, navigation, perception of direction) had to be fought against the originality from out of the box thinking. Mainly idea 3, 4 and 5 needed some testing and discussion about the above mentioned dilemma as well as the feasibility to produce an attractive poster. Idea 3 was a very interesting for the discussion, which was concluded to be worthy to incorporate into the concept. Idea 4 seems not feasible and maybe not appropriate for this assignment. Beside the difficulty with having very recognizable landmarks being placed in the correct distance from each other to guide de user, we also thought that we would face the fact to search for the right highlighting in every picture. Every picture contained too much detailing, which might distract the viewer from the landmark, but at the same time the landmark needs it context to be functional. So some sophisticated tricks with contrast should be applied. In the end we discarded this idea. Idea 5 was already mentioned a complex implementation, and therefore we tried to simplify it. The folding part could be useful, as we analyzed that the map in the museum route, incorporating the perspective play of idea 2 and 3, it had too much depth. The museums were all the way in the back. To give a bit more attention to that location, a fold might be doing the trick like in the figure below.
The fold could contain more information and could function like a billboard, it attracts attention.
Vision of map
When it comes to the vision aspect of the map, we always keep one thing in mind. It can’t be moved and it will be hang in front of the central station, visitors may just give few seconds or a minute to glimpse this map which means the map must be simple enough as well as very clear to transfer the main information to visitors in a very short time.
Shape
To simplify the map, we ignore all details about buildings along streets, i.e. structure, entrances and front view or top view. Simple black fine line is the only source that was applied in the map for indicating the roads.
Shape of church
As mention before, church are used as landmark for our map, so the shape of church are the only exception that can be draw in the graphic. For keeping the shape simple and meaningful, we chose the style comes from icons of the old church that are carved on bronze rivets around building itself.
Color
Fading blue is used in the map because blue is stand for Delft. Deep gray are using as the color of background, which can make the map stand out. In addition, deep gray color actually is made by less bright LED, in other words, it save a lot of energy.
Icons
Icons are very important for our design. For the same reason, we need the icons tell information as quickly as they can to visitor. So again, there is no feature of shape of the museum or shops. Instead, a set of standard, 2D and simple icon with high visibility and identification are designed and used.
Icons of museum
We used the same ‘M’ for icons of museum without names of every museums, because we considered the icons of Museum are not for telling visitors what kinds of these museums is, but for telling them the left route is ‘museum route’.
Icons of food
We chose beer as the icon for food because everyone in delft restaurant would like to have a glass of beer. Normally, an icon with folk and knife are symbol of restaurants, but we thought it is less active than beer icon.
Concept
When tourists see the museum route, the perspective and curve will make the information in far end more towards tourist, and standing museum icons should lead them to choose the museum direction. In the shopping route, those elements should also give people the trend to choose shopping direction.
User test
We tested twenty people in Rotterdam. As we thought the people who are in station maybe have known Delft well or rush through the test by arriving trains, we went to the streets where people were not in a hurry. Half of the people are elderly people. We had one Dutch speaking interviewer, another team member making notes and one observer & photographer.
The test was taken by following the instruction of the assignment. First show participant the two maps, after ten seconds ask him if he or she saw a difference between this two maps, if so continue asking what the difference would be. Second, give the same respondent only with one map and ask him to imagine himself going to visit delft for shopping and visiting museum and choose a direction he would go based on the map shown.
During the test, we wrote down the key points of their answer by taking notes for the further analysis. The data was recorded and categorized in the different questions, do you saw any differences? What is the difference? Offered route; which way will you choose K or P and why?
Based on the test, all the participants recognized that there was a difference between two maps. 10 people (50%) mentioned the icons, and 6 people (30%) mentioned the curve of the maps is different. There were 13 participant (65%) choose the right direction which is supposed to be given by the map. The reason why 7 participants chose the wrong direction was due to two aspects, one is the shopping area had an open gap when one wants to walk directly to that area, so they choose the museum. The other is because one road is shorter, so they will choose the shorter one. The other reasons are led by their personal preference (Shopping preference or museum preference).
The results for the two maps can be concluded as follow:
- The testing maps can achieve the goal, leading people to the proper direction which they suppose to. But they still need small improvements.
- The shopping area should be improved. People should not feel that area is emptier than the museum area.
- The distance of the road should not influence that much, people more likely would choose the shorter way.
There is an extra interesting finding about the position where people stand has an influence for their chosen direction. For example if people stand on the left of the map he might choose the right direction, because he is looking into that direction, this has been specifically remarked by one participant, who experienced this influence very consciously. This point can be studied in the further research.
Evaluation of the user test:
By improving those three points mentioned above, the test will be more valuable and successful; the outcome will give us more in depth support.
Theory applied
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. The width of the streets shown on the map becomes smaller, and that gives a perspective view.
CH5: height on the picture plane
Height 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.
Theory applied effectively
Colors are definitely effective, during the tests; this was distinguished by all the participants. Perceived distance had a big influence to the user, the museum route seemed closer than the shopping route, and therefore more people favored the museum route. Remarkably a few participants could describe the influence of the perspective and angle shown on the map related to on which position they saw the map. See picture below, there could be a correlation to the fact whether the participant stood left or right next to me with the route they chose, and this could interfere with the test results, also mentioned in the user test.
We did not pay attention to this fact, but one participant pointed this out as what influenced him a lot. This was in fact interesting to test, but we did not have the time for that anymore.
The most effective characteristic applied is the color, grouping and perspective. These were remarked as outstanding elements to attract the participant’s attention when we asked for a reason why they choose a certain route.
Final Design
In the final design, we keep the previous elements namely the perspective, curve and icon. The most museum area can be shown more through using perspective in the museum route, vice verse. By curving the far end of the map, the information can be seen more, so people will notice that. Additionally, the floating icons will attract people to go that direction compare with the lying icons. Balance of distance and clustered activity were more balanced between museum and shopping facilities.
The final design was improved according to the test result. The improvements will prevent some misleading elements to the user and enhance the tendency toward museum or shopping route.
1. Add one icon to fulfill the empty space in shopping area
2. Increase the right road's length for Museum Route
3. Reduce the brightness of shopping icons in Museum Route
4. Delete the key to symbols, modify some details
Route K (Museum)
Route P (Shops)
Review blog group 20: VieCieDie
The map of group 20 not only is a clear map, showing the important streets for the routes through Delft, but also the design itself feels like Delft. The city center is represented in a minimalistic way, showing only the outline of the city center, with a quite blank spot in the middle. This has the good point of keeping the exploration through the center a bit mysterious.
The usage of the names of the streets has the same functionality as a line on the route; also the fact that the names are placed in different orientation makes the reading of these names a bit more difficult. These names give the map a chaotic feeling, while the minimalistic map hit the spot with its simple representation. Therefore we think placing the names on the maps win this way was a bad choice. Although the typeface does matches the style of historical Delft.
We understand the fact that the red old building of the train station is shown as the indicator of the starting point, this matches the style very good. But if we remembered correctly the assignment is about designing a map for the moment when the new station is finished. So we doubt the recognizable starting point of having the old train station to represent this.
The icons to show the activities on the spot have in certain the same style, but in some way they don’t match on their level as visual information carriers. The fact that they share the same color, but has different level of elaboration gives us the feelings that group 20 choose styling above functional communication. We think that they should use a different set of distinguishable icons to put more emphasize on the communicative value.
To conclude, group 20 is loyal to the Delft identity, we admire their sense for this styling, but as a map it seems a bit too chaotic due the fact that they did not put distinction on the different levels of visual elements. The highlights do not stand out on the map.
Review blog group 27: C.A.L.L.
Group 27, followed a clear design process with good timed experimentation with their ideas. The idea of pictorial depth cue was a playful one which worked quite well. It showed their style and fitted very well in the map. From a visual attractiveness view, they did a great job on it, the map shows a unity with a lot of identity infused from C.A.L.L.
From the functional side, some critics can be mentioned. The assumption of people being attracted to the closed building is half true, because other factors also influence this choice, and therefore other solutions should have sought to emphasize this effect. Using cast shadow to show distance was not perceived until we read it in the report. For us the cast shadow told us more about the height of the building instead of the distance between the buildings. In the end a line is still used to indicate the route ,which is a proven functionality but not allowed according the assignment briefing. The puppets would have been enough to indicate a certain route, or actually the building itself showed the possible navigation from place to place. First time visitors would not pay too much attention to the exact address, especially in the shopping part.
The usage of having the paper houses facing different direction had little effect, the puppet walking to a certain direction influenced us more than other visual tricks. So that was applied well.
To conclude al, group 27 did a great job in designing this map, but some more experimentation might be needed to scramble the visual part which did not add visual perception to the viewers.
Reflection
Using a blog is a good method to present and record the process and result of this course as it is time based. We can use the blog system to communicate with other group, to see and study how other group works. It’s has some potential to reach a new way of studying, as it is like a open source group education.
In our opinion, we used the blog sufficiently, but sometime there was a time delayed for the post, we should take note of it. And for some reasons, large pictures cannot be uploaded through the system; it made trouble for us and wasted a lot of time. We got lots of useful information from other groups, but sometime we saw the comments after several days, in this case, we should check the blog more frequently. In addition, because the blog was created by one group member through his email account, so we cannot share the user name to operate and edit the blog, next time we will sign up a shared email, and then create the blog through the shared email, that will be more convenient.
On this assignment, there were several theoretical interesting facts to study about visual perception. But during the course we experienced the difficulty to apply these effectively in practice. Also a very interesting struggle was to communicate visually the route in an alternative way. Eventually it worked out more directionally at the start instead of guiding them the whole route. Which for a city tour like Delft would not be appropriate, the visitors would miss too much of its freedom to explore the city by themselves, and in reality the map was designed for a 10 second notification. Most of the visitors would not remember the whole route or the details on the route. So the main function as we applied would to give them the first push in a certain direction. We think we kind of succeeded that.
