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What I do is I organize information. I'm a graphic designer.

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Professionally, I try to make sense

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often of things that don't make much sense themselves.

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So my father might not understand what it is

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that I do for a living.

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His part of my ancestry has been farmers.

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He's part of this ethnic minority called the Pontic Greeks.

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They lived in Asia Minor, and fled to Greece

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after a genocide about a hundred years ago,

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and ever since that, migration has somewhat been

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a theme in my family.

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My father moved to Germany, studied there, and married,

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and as a result, I now have this half-German brain

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with all the analytical thinking

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and that slight dorky demeanor that comes with that.

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And of course it meant that I was a foreigner in both countries,

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and that of course made it pretty easy for me

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to migrate as well, in good family tradition, if you like.

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But of course, most journeys that we undertake

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from day to day are within a city, and especially

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if you know the city, getting from A to B

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may seem pretty obvious, right?

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But the question is, why is it obvious?

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How do we know where we're going?

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So I washed up on a Dublin ferry port

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about 12 years ago, a professional foreigner, if you like,

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and I'm sure you've all had this experience before, yeah?

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You arrive in a new city, and your brain is trying

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to make sense of this new place.

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Once you find your base, your home,

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you start to built this cognitive map of your environment.

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It's essentially this virtual map that only exists

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in your brain. All animal species do it,

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even though we all use slightly different tools.

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Us humans, of course, we don't move around

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marking our territory by scent, like dogs.

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We don't run around emitting ultrasonic squeaks, like bats.

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We just don't do that,

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although a night in the Temple Bar district can get pretty wild. (Laughter)

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No, we do two important things to make a place our own.

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First, we move along linear routes.

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Typically we find a main street, and this main street

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becomes a linear strip map in our minds.

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But our mind keeps it pretty simple, yeah?

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Every street is generally perceived as a straight line,

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and we kind of ignore the little twists and turns that the streets make.

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When we do, however, make a turn into a side street,

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our mind tends to adjust that turn to a 90-degree angle.

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This of course makes for some funny moments

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when you're in some old city layout that follows some sort of

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circular city logic, yeah?

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Maybe you've had that experience as well, right?

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Let's say you're on some spot on a side street that projects

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from a main cathedral square, and you want to get to

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another point on a side street just like that.

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The cognitive map in your mind may tell you, "Aris,

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go back to the main cathedral square, take

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a 90-degree turn, and walk down that other side street."

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But somehow you feel adventurous that day,

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and you suddenly discover that the two spots

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were actually only a single building apart.

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Now, I don't know about you, but I always feel like I find

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this wormhole or this inter-dimensional portal.

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So we move along linear routes

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and our mind straightens streets and perceives turns

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as 90-degree angles.

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The second thing that we do to make a place our own

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is we attach meaning and emotions to the things

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that we see along those lines.

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If you go to the Irish countryside, and you ask an old lady

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for directions, brace yourself for some elaborate

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Irish storytelling about all the landmarks. Yeah?

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She'll tell you the pub where her sister used to work,

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and go past the church where I got married, that kind of thing.

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So we fill our cognitive maps with these markers of meaning.

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What's more, we abstract,

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repeat patterns, and recognize them.

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We recognize them by the experiences,

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and we abstract them into symbols.

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And of course, we are all capable

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of understanding these symbols. (Laughter)

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What's more, we're all capable of understanding

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the cognitive maps, and you are all capable

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of creating these cognitive maps yourselves.

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So next time, when you want to tell your friend how to get to your place,

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you grab a beermat, grab a napkin,

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and you just observe yourself create this awesome piece

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of communication design. It's got straight lines.

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It's got 90 degree corners.

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You might add little symbols along the way.

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And when you look at what you've just drawn,

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you realize it does not resemble a street map.

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If you were to put an actual street map

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on top of what you've just drawn, you'd realize your streets

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and the distances, they'd be way off.

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No, what you've just drawn

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is more like a diagram or a schematic.

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It's a visual construct of lines, dots, letters,

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designed in the language of our brains.

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So it's no big surprise that the big information design icon

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of the last century, the pinnacle of showing everybody

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how to get from A to B, the London Underground map,

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was not designed by a cartographer or a city planner.

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It was designed by an engineering draftsman.

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In the 1930s, Harry Beck applied the principles of

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schematic diagram design, and changed

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the way public transport maps are designed forever.

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Now the very key to the success of this map

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is in the omission of less important information

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and in the extreme simplification.

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So straightened streets, corners of 90 and 45 degrees,

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but also the extreme geographic distortion in that map.

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If you were to look at the actual locations of these stations,

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you'd see they're very different. Yeah?

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But this is all for the clarity of the public tube map.

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Yeah? If you, say, wanted to get from Regent's Park Station

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to Great Portland Street, the tube map would tell you,

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take the tube, go to Baker Street, change over, take another tube.

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Of course, what you don't know is that the two stations

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are only about a hundred meters apart.

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Now we've reached the subject of public transport,

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and public transport here in Dublin

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is a somewhat touchy subject. (Laughter)

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For everybody who does not know the public transport here in Dublin,

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essentially we have this system of local buses

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that grew with the city. For every outskirt that was added,

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there was another bus route added running

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from the outskirt all the way to the city center,

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and as these local buses approach the city center,

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they all run side by side, and converge in pretty much

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one main street.

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So when I stepped off the boat 12 years ago,

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I tried to make sense of that,

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because exploring a city on foot only gets you so far.

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But when you explore a foreign and new public transport system,

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you will build a cognitive map in your mind

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in pretty much the same way.

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Typically, you choose yourself a rapid transport route,

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and in your mind this route is perceived as a straight line,

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and like a pearl necklace, all the stations and stops

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are nicely and neatly aligned along the line,

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and only then you start to discover some local bus routes

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that would fill in the gaps and that allow you for those

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wormhole, inter-dimensional portal shortcuts.

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So I tried to make sense, and when I arrived,

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I was looking for some information leaflets that would

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help me crack this system and understand it,

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and I found those brochures. (Laughter)

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They were not geographically distorted.

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They were having a lot of omission of information,

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but unfortunately the wrong information, say, in the city center.

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There were never actually any lines that showed the routes.

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There are actually not even any stations with names.

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Now the maps of Dublin transport, have gotten better,

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and after I finished the project, they got a good bit better,

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but still no station names, still no routes.

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So, being naive, and being half-German, I decided,

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"Aris, why don't you build your own map?"

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So that's what I did. I researched how each

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and every bus route moved through the city,

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nice and logical, every bus route a separate line,

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and I plotted it into my own map of Dublin,

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and in the city center,

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I got a nice spaghetti plate. (Laughter)

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Now this is a bit of a mess, so I decided, of course,

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you're going to apply the rules of schematic design,

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cleaning up the corridors, widening the streets

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where there were loads of buses, and making the streets

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at straight, 90-degree corners, 45-degree corners, or fractions of that,

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and filled it in with the bus routes. And I built this city center

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bus map of the system, how it was five years ago.

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I'll zoom in again so that you get the full impact of

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the quays and Westmoreland Street. (Laughter)

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Now I can proudly say — (Applause) —

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I can proudly say, as a public transport map,

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this diagram is an utter failure — (Laughter) —

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except probably in one aspect:

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I now had a great visual representation

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of just how clogged up and overrun the city center really was.

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Now call me old-fashioned, right, but I think

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a public transport route map should have lines,

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because that's what they are. Yeah?

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They're little pieces of string that wrap their way

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through the city center, or through the city.

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If you will, the Greek guy inside of me feels, if I don't

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get a line, it's like entering the Labyrinth of the Minotaur

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without having Ariadne giving you the string to find your way.

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So the outcome of my academic research,

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loads of questionnaires, case studies,

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and looking at a lot of maps, was that a lot of the problems

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and shortcomings of the public transport system here in Dublin

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was the lack of a coherent public transport map --

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a simplified, coherent public transport map --

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because I think this is the crucial step to understanding

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a public transport network on a physical level,

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but it's also the crucial step to make

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a public transport network mappable on a visual level.

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So I teamed up with a gentleman called James Leahy,

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a civil engineer and a recent Master's graduate of

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the Sustainable Development Program at DIT,

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and together we drafted this simplified model network

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which I could then go ahead and visualize.

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So here's what we did.

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We distributed these rapid transport corridors

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throughout the city center, and extended them into the outskirts.

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Rapid, because we wanted them to be served

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by rapid transport vehicles, yeah?

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They would get exclusive road use, where possible,

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and it would be high-quantity, high-quality transport.

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James wanted to use bus rapid transport for that,

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rather than light rail. For me, it was important

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that the vehicles that would run on those rapid transport corridors

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would be visibly distinguishable from local buses on the street.

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Now we could take out all the local buses

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that ran alongside those rapid transport means.

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Any gaps that appeared in the outskirts were filled again.

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So, in other words, if there was a street in an outskirt

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where there had been a bus, we put a bus back in,

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only now these buses wouldn't run all the way to the city center

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but connect to the nearest rapid transport mode,

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one of these thick lines over there.

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So the rest was merely a couple of months of work,

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and a couple of fights with my girlfriend of our place

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constantly being clogged up with maps,

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and the outcome, one of the outcomes, was this map

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of the Greater Dublin Area. I'll zoom in a little bit.

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This map only shows the rapid transport connections,

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no local bus, very much in the Metro map style

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that was so successful in London, and that since

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has been exported to so many other major cities,

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and therefore is the language that we should use

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for public transport maps.

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What's also important is, with a simplified network like this,

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it now would become possible for me

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to tackle the ultimate challenge,

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and make a public transport map for the city center,

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one where it wouldn't just show rapid transport connections

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but also all the local bus routes, streets and the likes,

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and this is what a map like this could like.

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I'll zoom in a little bit.

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In this map, I'm including each transport mode,

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so rapid transport, bus, DART, tram and the likes.

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Each individual route is represented by a separate line.

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The map shows each and every station,

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each and every station name,

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and I'm also displaying side streets,

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in fact, most of the side streets even with their name,

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and for good measure, also a couple of landmarks,

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some of them signified by little symbols,

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others by these isometric three-dimensional

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bird's-eye-view drawings.

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The map is relatively small in overall size,

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so something that you could still hold as a fold-out map,

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or display in a reasonably-sized display box on a bus shelter.

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I think it tries to be the best balance

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between actual representation

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and simplification, the language of way-finding in our brain.

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So straightened lines, cleaned-up corners,

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and, of course, that very, very important

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geographic distortion that makes public transport maps possible.

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If you, for example, have a look at the two main

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corridors that run through the city,

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the yellow and orange one over here, this is how

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they look in an actual, accurate street map,

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and this is how they would look in my distorted,

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simplified public transport map.

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So for a successful public transport map,

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we should not stick to accurate representation,

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but design them in the way our brains work.

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The reactions I got were tremendous. It was really good to see.

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And of course, for my own self, I was very happy to see

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that my folks in Germany and Greece finally have an idea

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what I do for a living. (Laughter) Thank you. (Applause)