notes.husk.org/likes images.

Following up on that new Boston subway map MIT has taken a more scientific approach to evaluating how legible the new map is. The short answer is that it stands up very well a d Co.DESIGN goes into the juicy details.

The Science Of A Great Subway Map

“Transit maps have a considerable impact on the everyday lives of people in cities…Recently, some vision scientists at MIT developed a remarkably direct way to perform just this type of map evaluation. The research team, led by Ruth Rosenholtz of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, devised a computer model capable of determining how well people will comprehend a subway map (or any other complex diagram) in a single glance. The model spits out alternate visualizations called “mongrels”—twisted images that represent how our brains actually process the maps in front of our eyes.”

I wonder how my own Bay Area Metro map would stand up.