Why designers can’t stop reinventing the subway map | Hacker News Reader

Why designers can’t stop reinventing the subway map

washingtonpost.com

25 pointsingve16 comments

My favorite subway map redesign is Art Lebedev's take on the Mosco Metro[1]. It's both better-looking and more usable than the current map, and the current map isn't bad. (It's certainly better than the official New York subway map linked in the article.)

They wrote a fascinating article about how they designed the map[2] and how they came to many of their design decisions. It's a great look on how much attention to detail goes into a design like this. And it's just cool to see all the different approaches they tried.

The second version of their map, and its accompanying explanation, are also worth a look[3].

[1]: http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/metro/map/

[2]: http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/metro/map/process/

[3]: http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/metro/map2/

Subway maps improved hugely when designers realised that they're not actually geographic maps - (generally speaking) users don't really care where things are when they're using a subway but rather they're interested in which points connect to which other points. A subway map is actually a graph.

EDIT: Fixed topological mistake.

Surely that means they are topological maps?

Yes, you're right. Commenting before coffee is a bad idea.

This is why graphic designers should be kept as far away from projects that create things that must be used by other people and not just admired for their beauty. The current subway map is a good map because it was basically designed by sociologists. Sociologists should be doing much more designing than what we ask of them today. This is one of the reasons the current map shows some but not all curves along a train line- the sociologists figured out that if a curve can be felt onboard a train then it is best to try to reflect the curve on the map. To not do so makes people feel uneasy. If I need beautiful or creative content for my art gallery, graphic designers are invited. If I need to create something useful then they are not.

A good graphic designer will work with people like sociologists, psychologists, etc to convey the information in the most effective way based on some set of requirements. If a graphic designer does not approach their work in this way then they aren't really doing anything.

"If I need beautiful or creative content for my art gallery, graphic designers are invited."

No, you don't - you'd need artists, not designers.

Learning to identify and distinguish between the two will allow you to avoid the wrong (but common) generalization you just wrote.

> This is why graphic designers should be kept as far away from projects that create things that must be used by other people and not just admired for their beauty.

> If I need beautiful or creative content for my art gallery, graphic designers are invited.

You're confusing design with art or decoration.

It doesn't make sense, at all, to say that designers should be kept away if you don't even have a correct working definition of design. I'd suggest you do a little bit of research before establishing such a position. You wouldn't dismiss, e.g., an economical model without at least some knowledge about it, right?

Many designers confuse design with art and decoration.

Yeah, the same way many "software developers" confuse software development with mashing up copy & pasted code without a clear picture of how it works. I'd argue that those aren't software developers, just like the designers" you refer to aren't designers.

Mixed Integer Programming has been used to automatically create metro maps:

http://i11www.iti.uni-karlsruhe.de/extra/publications/nw-dlh...

"And I think that’s the great thing about trains. We are all using this common system together, and it’s very kind of leveling. We all want it to be better. And we want it to run more frequently, more smoothly, with less problems. We have a love-hate relationship, and an enormous desire for it to work better."

I respect what designers do but the NYC MTA, at least, has way, way bigger problems than the way its system is visualized.

The moment you have anything other than utility in mind, you are off into lala land...

You can't consider utility and aesthetic?

It'd be a pretty boring world if every problem was approached like this.

Surely. The hard question, however, is "how would utility be defined in this context"?

I consider aesthetics to be one tool towards increasing utility. Things that are pretty make people calmer, and help them spend a few seconds to let their mind acclimate to the way information is presented. That done, they may actually use the thing, instead of immediately running away yelling "I just don't get it!"

Reply on news.ycombinator.com