Several years ago (before I even knew what a blog was), Peter Merholz wrote way more about paths at UC Berkeley than you’d ever want to read. The article revolved around the (at that time) emergent technology of tagging and, subsequently, tag clouds. I ran across that article a few months ago when I read his more recent piece on Desire Lines. Ever since, I’ve been thinking about how much I loathe tag clouds. There has to be a better way to demonstrate what’s the most popular/helpful/enjoyable content on a website.
Trails worn into a landscape that demonstrate the paths people want to take, not those that were laid down by the designer.
Improving on the Concept
We’ve incorporated some slightly more informative and (hopefully) eye-pleasing data-viz into the topic links on our blog.
The list is more informative than a tag cloud, slightly better looking, and as the content fills in the varied background widths will help one see what we really care about at a glance.
At this point, one could argue that this is just a tidy tag cloud, and they’d be right. It’s a neat idea, but, aside from novelty, what is it accomplishing?
Fusing Art and Information
I’d wager to guess you don’t care that we have (as of today) 3 posts on Culture and 2 posts on Experience Design. And unless you’re really interested in Captura, you’re not about to spend any amount of energy dissecting the meaning behind those numbers.
Visualizing information should (a) communicate the big idea behind the data and (b) instill some confidence around the validity of that data. In this case, confidence might come from some evidence that the most popular topics are emphasized because visitors found them most compelling and not just because we write a lot about it.
The following examples of painted paths are what inspired this post. I haven’t totally baked out how this translates into our situation, but the implications are pretty exciting.
“…a group of cyclists dumped 13 gallons of paint on the road at Berlin’s busy Rosenthaler Platz, creating a series of colourful lines as cars drove through.” —Anit Silva
What interests me most about these examples is how the presence of the paint probably changed some people’s behavior.
An ambient marketing campaign from DDB China and the Chinese Foundation for Environmental Protection. Roughly translated, “A canopy of a tree without leaves was placed on a pedestrian crossing. On each side of the crossing, large sponges soaked in green paint (eco-friendly and easily washable) painted the feet of passersby. The tree filled with leaves as pedestrians crossed the street.
“A little impactful campaign for the general public but which highlights a beautiful metaphor: every step you take helps create a greener planet.” —Peter Ayroles
Food For Thought
- In either case, what does the painted pavement say about the paths taken?
- Did people go out of their way to walk/ride/drive through the paint? If so, why?
- Did people go out of their way to avoid the paint? Again—why?
- If the paint were always there, and the paths exposed/created everyday, how might that influence behavior?
- If the paint were always there, and the paths exposed/created everyday, how might that influence belief?
