Touching Transport
T. Nagel, M. Maitan, E. Duval,
A. Vande Moere, J. Klerkx, K.
Kloeckl, and C. Ratti
A Case Study on Visualizing Metropolitan
Public Transit on Interactive Tabletops

Smart cities need smart citizens

Urban Demos

LIVE Singapore!
Provides people with access to a range of useful real-
time information about their city by developing an
open platform for the collection, elaboration and
distribution of real-time data that reflect urban
activity. Giving people visual and tangible access to
real-time information about their city enables them to
take their decisions more in sync with their
environment, with what is actually happening around
them.
http://senseable.mit.edu/livesingapore/

LIVE Singapore! visualizations

Design Goals & Requirements
• Enable access to data for different user groups.
• Support gathering insights.

Design Goals & Requirements
• Enable access to data for different user groups.
• Support gathering insights.
• Entice curiosity.
• Provide casual exploration.
• Offer multiple perspectives.
See details in paper

Touching Transport
Designing the Prototype

Public transit in Singapore

Visualization Experiments

AM peak
PM peak

Coordinated Multiple Views (Mockup)

Unifying views with transitions
sequential
(transition)
map

Map View

Time-Series View

Arcs View

Simple touch interactions
Tap to get details-on-demand Pinch and slide to zoom and pan Slide to drag or change time range

User Interface

http://youtu.be/wQpTM7ASc-w

Three Visualization Modes
• Map View
• Time-Series View
• Arcs View
Switching between these lets users focus on one view,
and still enables them to select the best fitting one in
order to gain insights based on different data
properties.
See details in paper

Exhibition

• Urban Mobility Symposium 2012
• Researchers, partners, citizens
• Two days on display
• Over 100 visitors interacted with the system
On display in semi-public exhibition

Urban Mobility Symposium, NUS, 2012

Evaluation

Study design

Study design
• Think-Aloud
• Recorded audio
• Observed participant’s behavior
• One participant per session
• 40-60 minutes

Participants
• LOC: citizens with knowledge of the local
environment (n=11)
• EXP: experts in the domain of urban mobility
(n=6)
• NON: non-experts with neither local nor domain
knowledge (n=10)
• 6 female and 21 male participants
• 18 to 40 years of age (median: 28)

Study design
Singapore
Leuven
1.01 x 0.57 meters
48 ppi
Diffused illumination (DI)
TFT LCD display
0.96 x 0.54 meters
50 ppi
Laser light plane (LLP)
Rear projector

Insights
• Basic
• Medium
• Advanced
See details in paper

Insights: Basic

Insights: Medium

Insights: Advanced

Insights Summary

Satisfaction

Conclusion & Future Work

Discussion
• Crafting aesthetics: Visual style and
Responsiveness
• Multiple coordinated vs single modal views

Discussion
• Crafting aesthetics: Visual style and
Responsiveness
• Multiple coordinated vs single modal views
See details in paper

Till Nagel
mail@tillnagel.com – twitter: @tillnm
Thank you. Questions?
AVI ‘14
30th May 2014, Como, Italy