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What I do is I organize information.

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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 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 after a genocide

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about a hundred years ago.

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And ever since that, migration
has somewhat been 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
and that slightly dorky demeanor

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that come 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 to migrate as well,

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in good family tradition, if you like.

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But of course, most journeys
that we undertake from day to day

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are within a city.

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And, especially if you know the city,

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getting from A to B
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
about 12 years ago,

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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,

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and your brain is trying
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 build this cognitive map
of your environment.

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It's essentially this virtual map
that only exists in your brain.

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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
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.

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(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,

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and this main street 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

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that follows some sort
of circular city logic, yeah?

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Maybe you've had that experience as well.

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

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that projects from a main
cathedral square,

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and you want to get to another point
on a side street just like that.

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The cognitive map
in your mind may tell you,

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"Aris, go back to the main
cathedral square,

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

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But somehow you feel adventurous that day,
and you suddenly discover

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that the two spots were actually
only a single building apart.

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Now, I don't know about you,

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but I always feel
like I find this wormhole

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or this inter-dimensional portal.

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(Laughter)

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So we move along linear routes

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and our mind straightens streets
and perceives turns 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 for directions,

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brace yourself for some
elaborate Irish storytelling

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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 that 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
repeat patterns and recognize them.

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We recognize them by the experiences
and we abstract them into symbols.

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And of course, we're all capable
of understanding these symbols.

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(Laughter)

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What's more, we're all capable
of understanding the cognitive maps,

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and you are all capable 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,
and you just observe yourself

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create this awesome piece
of communication design.

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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
on top of what you've just drawn,

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you'd realize your streets
and the distances -- they'd be way off.

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No, what you've just drawn
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

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that the big information-design icon
of the last century --

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the pinnacle of showing everybody
how to get from A to B,

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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,

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Harry Beck applied the principles
of schematic diagram design

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and changed 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.

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

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If you, say, wanted to get
from Regent's Park station

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to Great Portland Street,

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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.

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(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 that grew with the city.

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For every outskirt that was added,
there was another bus route added,

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running 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 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 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,

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all the stations and stops 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,

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and that allow for those 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

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that would help me crack this system
and understand it,

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and I found those brochures.

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(Laughter)

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They were not geographically distorted.

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They had a lot of omission of information,

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but unfortunately, the wrong information.

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Say, in the city center --

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there were never actually any lines
that showed the routes.

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(Laughter)

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There are actually not even
any stations with names.

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(Laughter)

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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.

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I researched how each and every bus route
moved through the city, nice and logical,

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every bus route a separate line.

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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.

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(Laughter)

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Now, this is a bit of a mess,

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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,

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widening the streets
where there were loads of buses

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and making the streets at straight,
90-degree corners, 45-degree corners

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or fractions of that,

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and filled it in with the bus routes.

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And I built this city center
bus map of the system,

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how it was five years ago.

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

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of the quays and Westmoreland Street.

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(Laughter)

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Now I can proudly say --

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(Applause)

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I can proudly say,
as a public transport map,

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this diagram is an utter failure.

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(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,

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but I think 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 get a line,

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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
and looking at a lot of maps,

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was that a lot of the problems
and shortcomings

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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
a public transport network mappable

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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

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of the Sustainable Development
program at DIT,

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and together we drafted
the 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 throughout the city center,

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and extended them into the outskirts.

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Rapid, because we wanted them to be served
by rapid-transport vehicles.

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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.

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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,

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of our place constantly
being clogged up with maps,

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and the outcome, one of the outcomes,

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was this map of the Greater Dublin area.

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I'll zoom in a little bit.

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This map only shows the rapid
transport connections, no local bus,

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very much in the "metro map" style
that was so successful in London,

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and that since 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
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 I 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 look 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
and simplification --

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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 geographic distortion

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that makes public transport maps possible.

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

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that run through the city --
the yellow and orange one over here --

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this is how 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.

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(Laughter)

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Thank you.

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(Applause)