Information Designs That Suck
Alice Rawsthorn writes about the agonies of navigating on a badly desgined information map.
“The dysfunctional Web site
No shortage of contenders here. Why are so many Web sites so hard to navigate? Fashion designers are among the worst offenders. What makes them think that we enjoy wasting time watching the squiggly animations of old-fashioned Flash sites, before searching, often fruitlessly, for badly organized information? Chanel? Lanvin? Stella McCartney? Yves Saint Laurent? All guilty as charged.”
Well said, Alice! The article’s worth a read.
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Lost In Translation
Ever been in a subway in an unfamiliar city and wondered which trains you should hop on? And where to get off to change trains? And how to get to your final destination? Been there, done that, and got lost. In New York, Washington, London, Tokyo and other cities.
By far, Tokyo’s subway was fairly easy to figure out thanks to the clear, color-coded subway map.
Check out Tokyo:
While the above design is complete, it misses geographical information. Ditto for London’s Tube Map.
For example, it’s easier in many cases to walk two minutes above ground to a station on a different line than to endure a 5-7 minute journey in the tube. As a visitor to London, I sometimes find it confusing to use the Tube Map as a measure of distance than a geographical land-map.
