VCD Progress reportBy Dave Senden, Jerome Maes, Maarten Geraets and Ralf Voncken Introductionin the course visual communication design we learned to develop, choose and apply forms of visual communication design techniques. The book Visual thinking for Design of Colin ware provided us with enough theory to create our own posters for assignment two. ProcessWe started by examining the route which the Delft circle represented. We placed markers over Google Maps to see how the route looked like. The Delft circle actually looks more like a square in reality, so we designed our first concepts with the actual route in mind. In our first brainstorm session, we quickly got started by making examples, to see which worked best. We tried to display the landmarks with vectorized black and white images, but these left the landmarks unrecognizable when scaled down to fit in the routes. This made us choose to work with icon representations instead. Using icons for a church, a museum and a shopping area. In our first presented concept, we used a 2.5D layout of the Delft map, drawing a dotted line over the route. We tapered the dotted line towards one direction to guide the viewer. Landmarks are represented with icons in bubbles over the route. The blue spheres at the bottom of the bubbles get smaller and lose contrast along the route to try and guide the user. See below for the first concept. Concept PresentationIn the presentation it became clear the we should not have used the actual route but a perfect circle. We also are not allowed to change the look of the route (circle) itself, so using tapered dotted lines was not permitted. Useful feedback about or landmark icons was that we could use them to guide the user also. The position and rotation in the concept were random and not thought out.

Routes shown during concept presentation Concept progressionAfter the first presentation, we needed to change our concept. We wanted to keep good elements like the icon bubbles but work with a circle instead. Before we scrapped our map for a circle, we tried out if a gradient on the background works as well in guiding the user in a certain direction. The idea here is that the users attention is attracted to the right bottom corner first because of the higher brightness and follow the route in the counter clockwise direction. At this point however, we came across an optical illusion which you see below in the green. The optical illusion technique was used in order to trick the observer’s mind to pull him towards a certain direction. When the observer looks at the centre of the circle it looks like each single square has a certain depth. The brain transforms this into a 3D object. So when the observer moves his head towards the visualization, the brain thinks that each square moves in a 3 dimensional direction. The 3D lighting of each individual square is different, which makes the squares move in different directions. If this lighting is placed properly per square, they move in a circle. And once the lighting of a square is mirrored, it moves in the opposite direction. This explains how the two circles look almost the same, but due to the small differences in lighting they are not. Because we could not use arrow like elements in the circle, we replaced the diamond shapes in the green image with squares in the final concept (right image). This makes the differences

between the two directions very subtle. The only thing that changes are the colors of the bezels of the blue squares (see final design). This still let the optical illusion work, perhaps in a slightly less effective manor. Because the optical illusion works best when the viewer focuses on the centre, we placed the Delft logo in the middle. This logo is in high contrast with the background, attracting the viewers attention first.

Final designHere you can see our final designs. As explained, we applied the optical illusion in the two designs. We alternate the bezels of the squares to make the circle rotate in alternating directions on alternating days. We used the same icons/bubbles from the first concept to illustrate where on the route the landmarks are placed. See below for an explanation of the techniques used from the book Visual Thinking for Design.

Theory used Visual Thinking for Design 2.5D (Chapter 5)We used 2.5D to orientate the little bubbles with icons according to which direction the viewer should walk. The bubbles are oriented facing the viewer to urge them to walk in the desired direction. To discourage the viewer from walking in the wrong direction, the bubbles are facing away from him in that direction. Contrast (Chapter 4)Contrast is used in the coloring of the little blue spheres around the circle. At the starting point of the route, contrast is high (dark blue over light blue); attracting the viewers’ attention. Other blue spheres placed in the desired walking direction take over the viewers’ attention to guide them in that direction. Size gradient (Chapter 5)The blue spheres which indicate the correct walking direction become smaller on the way. This illustrates the idea of distance; spheres placed further away on the route become smaller as the distance increases. Vertical placement (Chapter 5)We place the viewer’s position on the map at the bottom of the circle. The locations placed at the top of the circle are farther away in the real world. This is in line with the theory that if objects are placed higher in a vertical plane, they are perceived to be further away. the concept. TestingNext we needed to test our final concept and prove that our concept did work in real life. We went to the city centre of Eindhoven and asked people on the streets if they did see any differences between the two maps. We choose to test in Eindhoven because it’s located far

from Delft, so the majority of people are not known with the city of Delft. By creating a form to aid us during the test we could quickly take notes and conclude results. This form made analyzing the raw data much easier and more effective. The testing itself was quite fun and interesting because we noticed, quite soon, that the concept actually worked. Only four people that we had interviewed saw at least one difference between the posters. Three people noticed that the perspective in which the icons were placed differ from each other. Two people saw that the dots, which indicated the route, were placed in the opposite direction form each other. No participant actually said something about the rotating cycle, which had to force them to walk in a specific direction. This can be blamed because the poster were shown mostly while standing still and the optical illusion only becomes apparent when approaching the poster. But still only two people did chose the “wrong” direction. Within the next part you are able to read more about the actual results of our user test.

ResultsFrom the test with 22 participants 16 people recognized the differences between the maps

Discussion

In the end we think it is quite hard to say which technique is the most effective. Most techniques that we did apply are very subtle and designed in such a way that people would not notice them. A lot of participant mentioned the icons as the main reason for their choice. This proves the effectiveness of using symbols as a indicator in a poster or sign. We believe the main reason that people saw a difference between both posters is that we have showed the poster at the same time next to each other. This made it easier for people to compare the two posters. We believe that when showing them separately, even fewer people would notice a difference. Some recommendations for a redesign:We would improve the effect of the optical illusion by letting people focus more on the centre of the screen and less on the icons. At the moment the TU Delft logo is not striking enough which causes that people focus too much on the icons. We could have made the contrast between the Delft logo and the background a lot more obvious by not coloring the icons in the same color black. By having the viewer focus more on the centre when he walks towards it, the effect of the optical illusion becomes much more apparent, pulling his attention in the direction which was intended.