Controls

WASD  - Move

Context

I was given the task of redesigning a notable piece of information graphics for data visualization. I decided that I would want to make it in Unity as I am one of the only game devs in the class, and I thought that making it a more gamified experience would be an interesting twist.  

John Snow created a map in 1854, which was crucial in showing that cholera is not a miasma(through bad air), but spreads through water sources.  

Process

Initially, I thought of making it fully 2d but with WASD movement, the map felt lifeless and boring.  After asking the professor and others for review, I decided to tilt the map to make it easier for the player to feel like they are going about the streets.  

I planned for 3 main features 

• A counter that shows the number of nearby cases
• The ability to toggle the radius of scanning
• The ability to jump to the nearest pump. 

I physically plotted each poin on the map, partially as I wanted to see how it would feel to have to draw each of those individual lines (it was very tedious) .  

This then led to many questions about my design.  Should I hide the visualizations and only leave the UI? What colours should each point be? What colour should the pumps be? What should the iconography be?

I decided to change the location icons to squares as they felt better to look at visually. 

Future Plans

I thought about adding more features, but due to the time, I was unable to. If I had to iterate on my current version of my visualization, I would 

• Let the player jump between each pump in the area
• Remake the map in the scene 
• Add a 3D visualization overlay

Purpose of this Visualization

I decided I wanted to make this as a media for persons who may have never even known this map existed. I mentioned that a random, simple visualization was intriguing enough to stay with me for over a decade.  This is also why I put it on Itch.io.  People may encounter it and decide to just see what it is. This may open them up to learning more about this topic.