WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.216 What I do is I organize information. I'm a graphic designer. 00:00:03.216 --> 00:00:05.959 Professionally, I try to make sense 00:00:05.959 --> 00:00:09.803 often of things that don't make much sense themselves. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:09.803 --> 00:00:12.036 So my father might not understand what it is 00:00:12.036 --> 00:00:13.726 that I do for a living. 00:00:13.726 --> 00:00:16.003 His part of my ancestry has been farmers. 00:00:16.003 --> 00:00:19.127 He's part of this ethnic minority called the Pontic Greeks. 00:00:19.127 --> 00:00:23.513 They lived in Asia Minor, and fled to Greece 00:00:23.513 --> 00:00:25.983 after a genocide about a hundred years ago, 00:00:25.983 --> 00:00:28.908 and ever since that, migration has somewhat been 00:00:28.908 --> 00:00:30.497 a theme in my family. 00:00:30.497 --> 00:00:34.944 My father moved to Germany, studied there, and married, 00:00:34.944 --> 00:00:39.208 and as a result, I now have this half-German brain 00:00:39.208 --> 00:00:41.484 with all the analytical thinking 00:00:41.484 --> 00:00:44.859 and that slight dorky demeanor that comes with that. 00:00:44.859 --> 00:00:47.971 And of course it meant that I was a foreigner in both countries, 00:00:47.971 --> 00:00:50.509 and that of course made it pretty easy for me 00:00:50.509 --> 00:00:55.384 to migrate as well, in good family tradition, if you like. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:55.384 --> 00:00:57.721 But of course, most journeys that we undertake 00:00:57.721 --> 00:01:01.359 from day to day are within a city, and especially 00:01:01.359 --> 00:01:04.359 if you know the city, getting from A to B 00:01:04.359 --> 00:01:07.784 may seem pretty obvious, right? 00:01:07.784 --> 00:01:11.534 But the question is, why is it obvious? 00:01:11.534 --> 00:01:14.058 How do we know where we're going? NOTE Paragraph 00:01:14.058 --> 00:01:16.242 So I washed up on a Dublin ferry port 00:01:16.242 --> 00:01:19.898 about 12 years ago, a professional foreigner, if you like, 00:01:19.898 --> 00:01:23.389 and I'm sure you've all had this experience before, yeah? 00:01:23.389 --> 00:01:27.110 You arrive in a new city, and your brain is trying 00:01:27.110 --> 00:01:29.479 to make sense of this new place. 00:01:29.479 --> 00:01:32.535 Once you find your base, your home, 00:01:32.535 --> 00:01:37.135 you start to built this cognitive map of your environment. 00:01:37.135 --> 00:01:39.935 It's essentially this virtual map that only exists 00:01:39.935 --> 00:01:42.911 in your brain. All animal species do it, 00:01:42.911 --> 00:01:45.948 even though we all use slightly different tools. 00:01:45.948 --> 00:01:48.724 Us humans, of course, we don't move around 00:01:48.724 --> 00:01:51.898 marking our territory by scent, like dogs. 00:01:51.898 --> 00:01:57.474 We don't run around emitting ultrasonic squeaks, like bats. 00:01:57.474 --> 00:01:58.989 We just don't do that, 00:01:58.989 --> 00:02:04.211 although a night in the Temple Bar district can get pretty wild. (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:02:04.211 --> 00:02:08.075 No, we do two important things to make a place our own. 00:02:08.075 --> 00:02:10.933 First, we move along linear routes. 00:02:10.933 --> 00:02:14.462 Typically we find a main street, and this main street 00:02:14.462 --> 00:02:17.225 becomes a linear strip map in our minds. 00:02:17.225 --> 00:02:19.625 But our mind keeps it pretty simple, yeah? 00:02:19.625 --> 00:02:22.753 Every street is generally perceived as a straight line, 00:02:22.753 --> 00:02:27.037 and we kind of ignore the little twists and turns that the streets make. 00:02:27.037 --> 00:02:29.588 When we do, however, make a turn into a side street, 00:02:29.588 --> 00:02:34.300 our mind tends to adjust that turn to a 90-degree angle. 00:02:34.300 --> 00:02:37.001 This of course makes for some funny moments 00:02:37.001 --> 00:02:41.514 when you're in some old city layout that follows some sort of 00:02:41.514 --> 00:02:44.636 circular city logic, yeah? 00:02:44.636 --> 00:02:46.494 Maybe you've had that experience as well, right? 00:02:46.494 --> 00:02:49.763 Let's say you're on some spot on a side street that projects 00:02:49.763 --> 00:02:53.383 from a main cathedral square, and you want to get to 00:02:53.383 --> 00:02:57.026 another point on a side street just like that. 00:02:57.026 --> 00:03:02.252 The cognitive map in your mind may tell you, "Aris, 00:03:02.252 --> 00:03:04.956 go back to the main cathedral square, take 00:03:04.956 --> 00:03:08.041 a 90-degree turn, and walk down that other side street." 00:03:08.041 --> 00:03:10.318 But somehow you feel adventurous that day, 00:03:10.318 --> 00:03:14.924 and you suddenly discover that the two spots 00:03:14.924 --> 00:03:17.780 were actually only a single building apart. 00:03:17.780 --> 00:03:20.125 Now, I don't know about you, but I always feel like I find 00:03:20.125 --> 00:03:24.786 this wormhole or this inter-dimensional portal. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:24.786 --> 00:03:28.031 So we move along linear routes 00:03:28.031 --> 00:03:33.031 and our mind straightens streets and perceives turns 00:03:33.031 --> 00:03:34.609 as 90-degree angles. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:34.609 --> 00:03:37.460 The second thing that we do to make a place our own 00:03:37.460 --> 00:03:41.956 is we attach meaning and emotions to the things 00:03:41.956 --> 00:03:44.571 that we see along those lines. 00:03:44.571 --> 00:03:48.908 If you go to the Irish countryside, and you ask an old lady 00:03:48.908 --> 00:03:52.832 for directions, brace yourself for some elaborate 00:03:52.832 --> 00:03:56.793 Irish storytelling about all the landmarks. Yeah? 00:03:56.793 --> 00:04:00.023 She'll tell you the pub where her sister used to work, 00:04:00.023 --> 00:04:03.306 and go past the church where I got married, that kind of thing. 00:04:03.306 --> 00:04:07.482 So we fill our cognitive maps with these markers of meaning. 00:04:07.482 --> 00:04:10.659 What's more, we abstract, 00:04:10.659 --> 00:04:13.344 repeat patterns, and recognize them. 00:04:13.344 --> 00:04:16.468 We recognize them by the experiences, 00:04:16.468 --> 00:04:19.385 and we abstract them into symbols. 00:04:19.385 --> 00:04:22.281 And of course, we are all capable 00:04:22.281 --> 00:04:25.257 of understanding these symbols. (Laughter) 00:04:25.257 --> 00:04:28.518 What's more, we're all capable of understanding 00:04:28.518 --> 00:04:32.356 the cognitive maps, and you are all capable 00:04:32.356 --> 00:04:35.955 of creating these cognitive maps yourselves. 00:04:35.955 --> 00:04:38.894 So next time, when you want to tell your friend how to get to your place, 00:04:38.894 --> 00:04:41.794 you grab a beermat, grab a napkin, 00:04:41.794 --> 00:04:46.319 and you just observe yourself create this awesome piece 00:04:46.319 --> 00:04:50.066 of communication design. It's got straight lines. 00:04:50.066 --> 00:04:52.532 It's got 90 degree corners. 00:04:52.532 --> 00:04:54.629 You might add little symbols along the way. 00:04:54.629 --> 00:04:58.307 And when you look at what you've just drawn, 00:04:58.307 --> 00:05:03.507 you realize it does not resemble a street map. 00:05:03.507 --> 00:05:05.820 If you were to put an actual street map 00:05:05.820 --> 00:05:09.395 on top of what you've just drawn, you'd realize your streets 00:05:09.395 --> 00:05:12.870 and the distances, they'd be way off. 00:05:12.870 --> 00:05:14.761 No, what you've just drawn 00:05:14.761 --> 00:05:18.860 is more like a diagram or a schematic. 00:05:18.860 --> 00:05:23.275 It's a visual construct of lines, dots, letters, 00:05:23.275 --> 00:05:26.369 designed in the language of our brains. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:26.369 --> 00:05:31.424 So it's no big surprise that the big information design icon 00:05:31.424 --> 00:05:36.128 of the last century, the pinnacle of showing everybody 00:05:36.128 --> 00:05:39.624 how to get from A to B, the London Underground map, 00:05:39.624 --> 00:05:44.387 was not designed by a cartographer or a city planner. 00:05:44.387 --> 00:05:48.625 It was designed by an engineering draftsman. 00:05:48.625 --> 00:05:52.652 In the 1930s, Harry Beck applied the principles of 00:05:52.652 --> 00:05:56.904 schematic diagram design, and changed 00:05:56.904 --> 00:06:01.089 the way public transport maps are designed forever. 00:06:01.089 --> 00:06:04.639 Now the very key to the success of this map 00:06:04.639 --> 00:06:08.951 is in the omission of less important information 00:06:08.951 --> 00:06:11.442 and in the extreme simplification. 00:06:11.442 --> 00:06:15.720 So straightened streets, corners of 90 and 45 degrees, 00:06:15.720 --> 00:06:21.546 but also the extreme geographic distortion in that map. 00:06:21.546 --> 00:06:25.816 If you were to look at the actual locations of these stations, 00:06:25.816 --> 00:06:28.453 you'd see they're very different. Yeah? 00:06:28.453 --> 00:06:32.867 But this is all for the clarity of the public tube map. 00:06:32.867 --> 00:06:36.092 Yeah? If you, say, wanted to get from Regent's Park Station 00:06:36.092 --> 00:06:39.407 to Great Portland Street, the tube map would tell you, 00:06:39.407 --> 00:06:44.299 take the tube, go to Baker Street, change over, take another tube. 00:06:44.299 --> 00:06:47.664 Of course, what you don't know is that the two stations 00:06:47.664 --> 00:06:50.738 are only about a hundred meters apart. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:50.738 --> 00:06:53.863 Now we've reached the subject of public transport, 00:06:53.863 --> 00:06:56.377 and public transport here in Dublin 00:06:56.377 --> 00:07:00.663 is a somewhat touchy subject. (Laughter) 00:07:00.663 --> 00:07:04.152 For everybody who does not know the public transport here in Dublin, 00:07:04.152 --> 00:07:07.061 essentially we have this system of local buses 00:07:07.061 --> 00:07:10.826 that grew with the city. For every outskirt that was added, 00:07:10.826 --> 00:07:13.138 there was another bus route added running 00:07:13.138 --> 00:07:17.108 from the outskirt all the way to the city center, 00:07:17.108 --> 00:07:21.793 and as these local buses approach the city center, 00:07:21.793 --> 00:07:24.714 they all run side by side, and converge in pretty much 00:07:24.714 --> 00:07:27.652 one main street. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:27.652 --> 00:07:30.776 So when I stepped off the boat 12 years ago, 00:07:30.776 --> 00:07:34.427 I tried to make sense of that, 00:07:34.427 --> 00:07:39.901 because exploring a city on foot only gets you so far. 00:07:39.901 --> 00:07:44.653 But when you explore a foreign and new public transport system, 00:07:44.653 --> 00:07:47.753 you will build a cognitive map in your mind 00:07:47.753 --> 00:07:50.752 in pretty much the same way. 00:07:50.752 --> 00:07:55.866 Typically, you choose yourself a rapid transport route, 00:07:55.866 --> 00:07:59.945 and in your mind this route is perceived as a straight line, 00:07:59.945 --> 00:08:02.966 and like a pearl necklace, all the stations and stops 00:08:02.966 --> 00:08:07.239 are nicely and neatly aligned along the line, 00:08:07.239 --> 00:08:12.206 and only then you start to discover some local bus routes 00:08:12.206 --> 00:08:16.530 that would fill in the gaps and that allow you for those 00:08:16.530 --> 00:08:21.098 wormhole, inter-dimensional portal shortcuts. 00:08:21.098 --> 00:08:24.753 So I tried to make sense, and when I arrived, 00:08:24.753 --> 00:08:28.040 I was looking for some information leaflets that would 00:08:28.040 --> 00:08:31.152 help me crack this system and understand it, 00:08:31.152 --> 00:08:36.990 and I found those brochures. (Laughter) 00:08:36.990 --> 00:08:40.493 They were not geographically distorted. 00:08:40.493 --> 00:08:44.778 They were having a lot of omission of information, 00:08:44.778 --> 00:08:48.866 but unfortunately the wrong information, say, in the city center. 00:08:48.866 --> 00:08:53.504 There were never actually any lines that showed the routes. 00:08:53.504 --> 00:08:59.459 There are actually not even any stations with names. 00:08:59.459 --> 00:09:03.648 Now the maps of Dublin transport, have gotten better, 00:09:03.648 --> 00:09:10.361 and after I finished the project, they got a good bit better, 00:09:10.361 --> 00:09:13.518 but still no station names, still no routes. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:13.518 --> 00:09:19.486 So, being naive, and being half-German, I decided, 00:09:19.486 --> 00:09:21.988 "Aris, why don't you build your own map?" 00:09:21.988 --> 00:09:24.756 So that's what I did. I researched how each 00:09:24.756 --> 00:09:28.072 and every bus route moved through the city, 00:09:28.072 --> 00:09:32.063 nice and logical, every bus route a separate line, 00:09:32.063 --> 00:09:35.137 and I plotted it into my own map of Dublin, 00:09:35.137 --> 00:09:37.899 and in the city center, 00:09:37.899 --> 00:09:42.036 I got a nice spaghetti plate. (Laughter) 00:09:42.036 --> 00:09:47.950 Now this is a bit of a mess, so I decided, of course, 00:09:47.950 --> 00:09:51.675 you're going to apply the rules of schematic design, 00:09:51.675 --> 00:09:54.334 cleaning up the corridors, widening the streets 00:09:54.334 --> 00:09:57.850 where there were loads of buses, and making the streets 00:09:57.850 --> 00:10:02.392 at straight, 90-degree corners, 45-degree corners, or fractions of that, 00:10:02.392 --> 00:10:07.214 and filled it in with the bus routes. And I built this city center 00:10:07.214 --> 00:10:11.537 bus map of the system, how it was five years ago. 00:10:11.537 --> 00:10:14.029 I'll zoom in again so that you get the full impact of 00:10:14.029 --> 00:10:18.383 the quays and Westmoreland Street. (Laughter) 00:10:18.383 --> 00:10:26.793 Now I can proudly say — (Applause) — 00:10:26.793 --> 00:10:31.081 I can proudly say, as a public transport map, 00:10:31.081 --> 00:10:36.865 this diagram is an utter failure — (Laughter) — 00:10:36.865 --> 00:10:38.924 except probably in one aspect: 00:10:38.924 --> 00:10:41.977 I now had a great visual representation 00:10:41.977 --> 00:10:46.165 of just how clogged up and overrun the city center really was. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:46.165 --> 00:10:49.100 Now call me old-fashioned, right, but I think 00:10:49.100 --> 00:10:52.528 a public transport route map should have lines, 00:10:52.528 --> 00:10:54.304 because that's what they are. Yeah? 00:10:54.304 --> 00:10:57.915 They're little pieces of string that wrap their way 00:10:57.915 --> 00:11:00.675 through the city center, or through the city. 00:11:00.675 --> 00:11:04.571 If you will, the Greek guy inside of me feels, if I don't 00:11:04.571 --> 00:11:09.103 get a line, it's like entering the Labyrinth of the Minotaur 00:11:09.103 --> 00:11:12.285 without having Ariadne giving you the string to find your way. 00:11:12.285 --> 00:11:16.391 So the outcome of my academic research, 00:11:16.391 --> 00:11:19.897 loads of questionnaires, case studies, 00:11:19.897 --> 00:11:24.943 and looking at a lot of maps, was that a lot of the problems 00:11:24.943 --> 00:11:28.019 and shortcomings of the public transport system here in Dublin 00:11:28.019 --> 00:11:30.729 was the lack of a coherent public transport map -- 00:11:30.729 --> 00:11:33.003 a simplified, coherent public transport map -- 00:11:33.003 --> 00:11:36.442 because I think this is the crucial step to understanding 00:11:36.442 --> 00:11:39.940 a public transport network on a physical level, 00:11:39.940 --> 00:11:42.405 but it's also the crucial step to make 00:11:42.405 --> 00:11:46.155 a public transport network mappable on a visual level. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:46.155 --> 00:11:49.805 So I teamed up with a gentleman called James Leahy, 00:11:49.805 --> 00:11:53.430 a civil engineer and a recent Master's graduate of 00:11:53.430 --> 00:11:56.993 the Sustainable Development Program at DIT, 00:11:56.993 --> 00:12:00.919 and together we drafted this simplified model network 00:12:00.919 --> 00:12:04.356 which I could then go ahead and visualize. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:04.356 --> 00:12:06.471 So here's what we did. 00:12:06.471 --> 00:12:11.156 We distributed these rapid transport corridors 00:12:11.156 --> 00:12:15.805 throughout the city center, and extended them into the outskirts. 00:12:15.805 --> 00:12:18.543 Rapid, because we wanted them to be served 00:12:18.543 --> 00:12:21.969 by rapid transport vehicles, yeah? 00:12:21.969 --> 00:12:24.912 They would get exclusive road use, where possible, 00:12:24.912 --> 00:12:28.442 and it would be high-quantity, high-quality transport. 00:12:28.442 --> 00:12:31.338 James wanted to use bus rapid transport for that, 00:12:31.338 --> 00:12:34.368 rather than light rail. For me, it was important 00:12:34.368 --> 00:12:38.458 that the vehicles that would run on those rapid transport corridors 00:12:38.458 --> 00:12:44.506 would be visibly distinguishable from local buses on the street. 00:12:44.506 --> 00:12:47.749 Now we could take out all the local buses 00:12:47.749 --> 00:12:50.956 that ran alongside those rapid transport means. 00:12:50.956 --> 00:12:54.455 Any gaps that appeared in the outskirts were filled again. 00:12:54.455 --> 00:12:57.618 So, in other words, if there was a street in an outskirt 00:12:57.618 --> 00:13:00.581 where there had been a bus, we put a bus back in, 00:13:00.581 --> 00:13:05.144 only now these buses wouldn't run all the way to the city center 00:13:05.144 --> 00:13:08.626 but connect to the nearest rapid transport mode, 00:13:08.626 --> 00:13:10.570 one of these thick lines over there. 00:13:10.570 --> 00:13:13.959 So the rest was merely a couple of months of work, 00:13:13.959 --> 00:13:17.001 and a couple of fights with my girlfriend of our place 00:13:17.001 --> 00:13:20.294 constantly being clogged up with maps, 00:13:20.294 --> 00:13:22.894 and the outcome, one of the outcomes, was this map 00:13:22.894 --> 00:13:28.007 of the Greater Dublin Area. I'll zoom in a little bit. 00:13:28.007 --> 00:13:31.583 This map only shows the rapid transport connections, 00:13:31.583 --> 00:13:34.869 no local bus, very much in the Metro map style 00:13:34.869 --> 00:13:38.808 that was so successful in London, and that since 00:13:38.808 --> 00:13:42.152 has been exported to so many other major cities, 00:13:42.152 --> 00:13:44.644 and therefore is the language that we should use 00:13:44.644 --> 00:13:47.513 for public transport maps. 00:13:47.513 --> 00:13:52.817 What's also important is, with a simplified network like this, 00:13:52.817 --> 00:13:55.517 it now would become possible for me 00:13:55.517 --> 00:13:58.730 to tackle the ultimate challenge, 00:13:58.730 --> 00:14:02.243 and make a public transport map for the city center, 00:14:02.243 --> 00:14:05.517 one where it wouldn't just show rapid transport connections 00:14:05.517 --> 00:14:09.077 but also all the local bus routes, streets and the likes, 00:14:09.077 --> 00:14:11.253 and this is what a map like this could like. 00:14:11.253 --> 00:14:14.652 I'll zoom in a little bit. 00:14:14.652 --> 00:14:20.885 In this map, I'm including each transport mode, 00:14:20.885 --> 00:14:26.106 so rapid transport, bus, DART, tram and the likes. 00:14:26.106 --> 00:14:32.429 Each individual route is represented by a separate line. 00:14:32.429 --> 00:14:37.303 The map shows each and every station, 00:14:37.303 --> 00:14:40.392 each and every station name, 00:14:40.392 --> 00:14:45.079 and I'm also displaying side streets, 00:14:45.079 --> 00:14:49.066 in fact, most of the side streets even with their name, 00:14:49.066 --> 00:14:53.378 and for good measure, also a couple of landmarks, 00:14:53.378 --> 00:14:56.192 some of them signified by little symbols, 00:14:56.192 --> 00:14:59.306 others by these isometric three-dimensional 00:14:59.306 --> 00:15:00.875 bird's-eye-view drawings. 00:15:00.875 --> 00:15:04.068 The map is relatively small in overall size, 00:15:04.068 --> 00:15:07.116 so something that you could still hold as a fold-out map, 00:15:07.116 --> 00:15:10.818 or display in a reasonably-sized display box on a bus shelter. 00:15:10.818 --> 00:15:15.318 I think it tries to be the best balance 00:15:15.318 --> 00:15:18.483 between actual representation 00:15:18.483 --> 00:15:24.069 and simplification, the language of way-finding in our brain. 00:15:24.069 --> 00:15:27.517 So straightened lines, cleaned-up corners, 00:15:27.517 --> 00:15:29.468 and, of course, that very, very important 00:15:29.468 --> 00:15:34.648 geographic distortion that makes public transport maps possible. 00:15:34.648 --> 00:15:36.609 If you, for example, have a look at the two main 00:15:36.609 --> 00:15:38.957 corridors that run through the city, 00:15:38.957 --> 00:15:41.105 the yellow and orange one over here, this is how 00:15:41.105 --> 00:15:44.428 they look in an actual, accurate street map, 00:15:44.428 --> 00:15:48.112 and this is how they would look in my distorted, 00:15:48.112 --> 00:15:51.373 simplified public transport map. NOTE Paragraph 00:15:51.373 --> 00:15:54.507 So for a successful public transport map, 00:15:54.507 --> 00:15:56.500 we should not stick to accurate representation, 00:15:56.500 --> 00:15:59.319 but design them in the way our brains work. NOTE Paragraph 00:15:59.319 --> 00:16:02.542 The reactions I got were tremendous. It was really good to see. 00:16:02.542 --> 00:16:06.166 And of course, for my own self, I was very happy to see 00:16:06.166 --> 00:16:09.588 that my folks in Germany and Greece finally have an idea 00:16:09.588 --> 00:16:15.566 what I do for a living. (Laughter) Thank you. (Applause)