A schematic map of Patna for discovering the trendy and popular coffee date spots throughout the city.
PROJECT
NID Classroom Project
Course: Visualizing Information
Guide: Rasagy Sharma
TIMELINE
1 week
Jan 2022
Process
- Scale, Audience & Purpose
- Mental model sketch
- Tracing relevant aspects from OSM
- Abstraction: Grids & geometric shapes
- Simplification vs. Minimal
- Elements of the city
- Visual hierarchy
- Details: Icons, Typography, Legend, Context
Scale, Audience & Purpose
Scale: City of Patna
Audience: Youngsters (local and first-time visitors)
Context: Patna, historically recognized as Pataliputra, resides on the banks of the Ganges River in northeastern India’s Bihar region. Over the past three years, the city has witnessed the rise of an emerging cafe culture, which is increasingly becoming a lifestyle choice for its youth. When it comes to planning a date, individuals are increasingly opting for cafes to project a sense of trendiness to their companions
Purpose: The map would help youngsters discover all the hip and happening coffee date spots in the city.
Mental model sketch
A journey down memory lane was undertaken to make a blind map of the city, without visual references.
Tracing relevant Aspects
The process began with tracing the boundaries of the city. While marking all the spots within it, it was observed they all lie predominantly situated at the city’s center. Consequently, an adjustment was made by zooming in on the map and outlining national highways and major roads to define the boundaries of the map.
Abstraction: Grids & geometric shapes
Previous iterations borrowed its road as they were on Google Maps. But when a person traverses a lengthy road, their perception remains that of a straight path, even though Google Maps may depict curves. This is where abstraction was used in the map-making process. The incorporation of a grid allowed for the elimination of curves. It reduced cognitive load by streamlining the information processing
In the further round of abstraction, the roads were straightened even more to enhance scanability and comprehension. The River Ganges was constricted to provide additional city details. The objective was to align the diagrammatic map representation as closely as possible with people’s real-life perception, though resulting in some distance skewing, leading the map non-to-scale.
Showing cafes in the legend
Search By Name
Whenever a place is looked up, it necessitates a dual search process, both in the legend and on the map, effectively doubling the time required for the task. While an alphabetical arrangement proves efficient when individuals are familiar with the location they seek, it is less helpful for first-time visitors. The primary objective was to minimize this time-consuming process.
Search By Groups
Cafes situated in the same region were grouped together to facilitate ease of use. For instance, a newcomer to the city searching for a cafe in Boring Road without a specific name would benefit from having the complete list of cafes categorized under Boring Road. Grouping effectively organized information and minimized the search area within the legend. Furthermore, the map was designed to remain functional in black and white to accommodate those without access to color printers, leading to the decision to abstain from color-coding groups.
Details
A lighter color was selected for the landmass to avoid it standing out and to allow for a subdued appearance, enabling clearer visibility of foreground elements such as roads and numbers. This subtle contrast was employed to establish an information hierarchy within the map. The map creation process involved layering different sets of details. Futura PT was employed for road and chowk names, while Bree Serif Light in uppercase was used for regional labeling. A heart-shaped icon was chosen to represent dating spots on the map, and this same visual element was utilized to create a ripple effect in the depiction of the River Ganges.
