Final Project: Taxi!

This was to be submitted as a hard copy at approximately 16"x14". Unfortunately due to some technical difficulties, poor planning on my part (not using a more standardized canvas/paper size to start with), time constraints, and the realization of just how much it would cost at Kinko's, it will instead be submitted online.

Its visual impact would have been much more striking as printed copy in my opinion, but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless.

Thanks for a fun class!

Programs used:

Adobe Photoshop CS4

ESRI ArcMap 9.3

Microsoft Excel 2007

My data for the project can be seen here (actual calculations and graphs were done in Excel): http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Am2bxYkU36rCdDZlRVdabzZZU0k4NjhVM0pZY3Ewenc&hl=en

Blogger apparently resizes uploaded pics to a maximum width of 1600px. If the original size is desired I can send it in an email.

Week 8: Color & Symbol Experiments

My two maps (choropleth and symbol-based) relating to the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver are below. Please click to view them full-screen and at full resolution:

Week 6: Typography on Maps

What started off as an experimentation and modification of your standard urban area/street map slowly developed into more of a thematic map. The more I worked on this map, the more I found myself slowly taking things away. But I soon found myself wanting to add things to replace the lost elements and convey a little more information than a simple metropolitan area map.

I continued to tweak the map by adding and removing features but removing any more of the roads suddenly made for a very empty feeling map. I compensated by adding locations for more technology company headquarters, but that soon cluttered the map in a different way. Complicating matters even further is the fact that many companies are densely concentrated in several areas, making it near impossible to show what is where without creating several insets.

One thing I'm definitely not happy about is how ArcMap is unable to properly anti-alias vector graphics (or for the most part, any graphics in general used within the program.) The poor aliasing results in many overly jagged edges which challenges readability and makes the corporate logos look somewhat amateurish--even though I employed only high quality vector originals for the logos to begin with. The end result would've looked much better had I used Photoshop, but I restricted myself to ArcMap for the final output. It's just disappointing that ArcMap falls short with small but significant issues such as aliasing and difficulty in defining one's own color gradients (as far as I could tell, one would have to employ programming knowledge in the form of VBscript or C++ to do something as simple as defining your own color ramp,) but I digress.

I ended up with the above map as a compromise of what I feel is an adequate 'feel' of urban-ness while retaining what I feel are the largest and/or most influential companies in the area. Perhaps with more time, the inset idea may have come to fruition.

Week 4: Elements of Graphic Design

Week 3: Photosynths and Volunteered Geography

This Photosynth I created depicts a multitude of food trucks who all converged on the TLofts at 11500 Tennessee Ave in West LA on the afternoon of Saturday, January 23rd for a fundraiser to raise money and awareness about the ongoing relief efforts in Haiti.

I feel like this is a great example of how VGI (volunteered geographic information) can work on multiple levels, and in the context of a Web 2.0+ world. At its most basic level, any VGI constructed Photosynth can give others the experience of being in a certain location at a certain point in time, in a more immersive manner than a simple photograph can. However, it can also help spread awareness about local events and macro events in several ways. For instance, this Photosynth in particular lets a viewer know that:

1. There are luxury lofts that exist in this location, known as the TLofts.
2. There are a multitude of food trucks in the West LA/LA area that serve food from various world cuisines, including sweets and desserts.
3. These food trucks aren't necessarily easily found at first glance, but further research shows that they can be tracked via Web 2.0-friendly methods such as Twitter.
4. Some proceeds from this event went to Red Cross International relief efforts in Haiti, and that there was some sort of catastrophe in Haiti which inspired such a fundraiser. (This is if a hypothetical viewer had been living under a rock for some reason.)

This is especially important given that this didn't get as much media attention as it should have, in my opinion. It combined a uniquely LA experience (specialty food trucks) while integrating current events and an indirect way of supporting the ongoing relief efforts in Haiti.

Some potential pitfalls include possible privacy concerns--as these methods become more ubiquitous, people will be captured in certain places and at certain times, whether they wish to be or not. Another potential issue is that of motive. Businesses seeking a form of cheap advertising may employ these methods to try and reach a larger audience. How about paying a volunteer geographer to make sure a certain billboard, poster, or building shows up clearly in their pictures? We can already see this to some extent as Google will soon be selling advertising space in its street-view images of popular destinations such as New York's Times Square, replacing whatever images were on digital billboards and buildings at the time that the street-view images were originally captured.

I highly recommend opening my Photosynth in a new window and viewing it in full-screen for the best viewing experience. Images can be zoomed in quite a bit as I elected to upload all the images in their full resolution. I realize that on a technical level the Photosynth could have been better, as realized by the 61% synthy score that was given. However I ask that you try and overlook the score and instead focus more on the content and its significance.

I've since learned that the algorithms used by Photosynth did not match up some of my pictures very well and I realize why. The large amounts of people present at this event--along with vehicle traffic--made it difficult to get in position for good overlapping images, as well as timing images so that they had the least about of 'noise' in them as possible. I could've made a Photosynth of something less interesting that would've scored closer to 100% (and I did in fact, by creating a Photosynth of a tree and some bushes, but I thought that was terribly boring,) but I don't think it could've approached how interesting and relevant this event was to some of the ideas that were described in the "Citzens as sensors" essay.

Week 2: US Presidential Election Map

My map of the 2008 United States Presidential Election:

Screencap of the NYTimes Interactive US Presidential Election Map:

Critique and three methods for possible improvement:

1. The labeling employed in the map could be improved in several ways. Firstly, it is inconsistent, where some states are abbreviated with their two letter postal code while others are completely spelled out. I understand some abbreviating is unavoidable because of space constraints, but I feel that the map would be clearer at a glance if the labeling scheme were more consistent so that potential viewers are not forced to decipher certain states while the complete names of others stare them in the face.
2. Secondly, the labeling of most of the smaller states in New England and the eastern seaboard are omitted entirely. This could be remedied by employing a zoomed inset of that particular region, or by placing the labels outside of the state (similar to the case of D.C.) and drawing lines that point to each state being labeled.
3. For the purpose of simply showing which states' electoral votes were won by which candidate, the map is adequate but may be misleading. If one were to view the map without any knowledge of how the electoral college works in the United States, one might conclude that the election was not as close as it really was. Information about the relationship (or lack thereof) between the physical size of a state and the number of electoral votes it receives is a potentially significant omission from the map. A number label to represent the electoral votes alongside the state label could be used, or sacrificing accurate physical representation in order to show a relationship between number of electoral votes and physical representation (i.e. relative size of state based on amount of electoral votes it's worth) could be employed.

Week 1: Census 2000