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April 02, 2003
get London walking
Rather grandly called "a New Perspective to London", I was thrust a new walking map when coming out of the tube (I'd heard about it from blech). It's a Transport for London initiative, run by the Street Management section. It's a good idea, and it's nice to see that they're thinking of walking as part of the transport strategy.
However, the map falls a bit short of what I hoped. Hopefully I'll be able to spell out my main objections here.
a small example of the new map
I'll get my subjective comments out the way first - this map is painful for any Londoner to use. The map breaks a big convention: south is at the top. I showed the map to several people and tried to get them to locate the office. Half of them couldn't. We're used to maps generally having the same rules - tube maps, bus maps, the A-Z, mapping websites (but not bus spider maps, although the larger ones try to have the same kind of relationship with reality as the tube map). They're not all accurate (and don't need to be), but it gives a point of reference to the user.
Although one map tends to be used at a time, the mental model of London is created by using several maps, and trying to link them together. This map doesn't provide many useful hooks that you would expect, such as the Thames. The map is meant to aid findability by showing 3d isometric buildings. This has the potential to be useful, but the simplified detail of the buildings, limited colour palette, and strange isometric viewpoint means that the large landmarks blur into the background, and the smaller buildings are impossible to match from real life to the map.
The landmarks chosen are strange. The biggest are British Museum, Telecom Tower, and, errr Euston and Kings Cross. I'm not sure how many people could name them when viewed from above and behind. The other highlighted landmarks (which, in yellow, are readable and findable on the map) are hospitals, theatres, universities, a few shops, and one or two swimming pools and sports facilities.
The map does not cover a useful area. It covers Aldwych, to King's Cross, Regent's Park, and Selfridges - a pretty random selection. Soho and Covent Garden are covered, at least, but it's odd that they're not connected to the other tourist sights.
The deputy mayor writes, "How many people use the tube to travel between Leicester Square and Covent garden rather than walk?" - the classic tourist problem. This map, however does not have Leicester Square on it!
So, I think this map suffers from a lack of idea of who will use it. It seems to be aimed at tourists, arriving at King's Cross or Euston, trying to find their hotel in Russell Square. Or something. The scale of the map means that it pretty useless to use when actually walking - you cannot fold it to a useable size and still see enough of the map.
Let's hope TfL test this map, and learn from its mistakes, and from research into how people use maps, for planning and on the street. My finger-in-the-air prediction is that there needs to be a tourist-centric map, and one for Londoners.
I'm also worried about the lack of integrated public transport. There's tube stops on the map, but these are small, hard to spot, and offer no information about where the tube lines go. Buses don't get a mention at all. This means the map offers no help for making decisions about modes of transport and multi-modal journeys. There's no building numbers on any of the streets, so it's also not much use when turning an address into a place.
Nice to have on the wall, I guess.
Does anyone do large A-Z type posters of central London?
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