My chosen location
Climate
In phoenix, where the summers peak at over 110 degrees, (record high 122) dealing with the heat is vital. You either have two options, make your property be entirely indoors, or build intelligently to take advantage of landscaping and shade. Desert ridge is built using shade and intelligently aligning the buildings to minimize sunlight on customers, using an east-west corridor, where most shops have either a north facing door, or a south facing one that is always shaded.
Income
This marketplace is a fairly popular shopping hub for people in Northern Phoenix, and even attracts customers from the more affluent areas of Cave Creek and Scottsdale. The socioeconomic status of the surrounding areas is a primary force at play for this location. You can see this in the wide variety of shops available here, from a Kohl’s and Ross on the outside of the market, to a chocolate shop selling 20 dollar chocolate apples, or a Korean BBQ restaurant selling Wagyu steaks.
Culture
Desert ridge provides a community stage for various performing arts groups to come and put on shows during business hours. These usually draw large crowds and drive business to the shops.
(Note, I don’t really like how poorly this maps, if you have suggestions, i’d love to hear them, otherwise I’ll probably change this force.)
Tourism
Immediately next to the marketplace is a Marriott Resort and Spa, complete with Golf Course, Tennis courts, pool, even a lazy river. This being so close to the Desert Ridge Marketplace also drives a great deal of business and visitors. Additionally, due to the price of the resort, this adds to the income forces at play here in the marketplace.
Business Types
The marketplace is also built and oriented in an interesting pattern, where the larger department style stores are on the exterior, in their own rows across a parking lot from the main marketplace, while the smaller or more specific shops are within the marketplace itself. While you cant see the names from this satellite map, you can see the general layout.
Final* Map
This map will be getting updated every day (probably) So come back frequently with advice/suggestions. Feel free to add to or suggest changes to my list of planned changes below.
Planned changes include
- Renaming shops from “places” to “Stores/Restaurants” – Please provide you suggestions here, I don’t like the / but cant think of a better word for “places you spend your money”
- Adjusting the base map a little to the south west so that the intersection in the north west is more obviously an intersection
- Including a compass, I’ve always loved those.
- Maybe adding the shops “value” back in as people suggested for my income map. Removed it because it felt off on the full map.
- Finding a way to categorize something as both a tourist spot, and assign a “place you know” value to it.
- Figuring out how to clearly indicate where the tourism is primarily coming from.
- Maybe modifying the sun path to more clearly indicate sunlight, or eliminating it entirely.
- Double checking all the stores, the vacancies are based on memory, not accurate details, I’ll go back on Saturday and make sure it is all correct.
- Also apparently I need a scale.
Underlined and Italicized = complete
Strike = Did not implement
Final Final Map
Hi Greg,
Here are a few of my impressions and interpretations from your final map.
– I read the buildings as buildings because of your drop shadows, and the lines as roads with the negative spaces as parking, so great job on making the distinction there very clear.
– From this aerial layout of roads, parking and buildings, this looks like a shopping mall. This is confirmed by the text on your post, but you can make it clear for someone looking at only your map by placing a title somewhere on the map.
– I think it’s fun that you distinguished the popularity of the places based on what places “people know.” I’m curious though who these “people” are and maybe you can find a way to explain that more in your map by altering the labels.
– I’m still really unclear on why there are dollar signs outside of the shopping mall. My initial thought is, shouldn’t it be inside because that is where transactions happen? I see that Christina pointed that out as well and I agree that the $-$$$ makes more sense inside the buildings the way you had it in your force map. I would vary the frequency instead of the shape of the $ to portray more/less money. I also think this element needs to be explained in your legend. (I know $ icons may be deemed “self-explanatory” but in this case, it is not.)
– I think you can ditch the black outline on the buildings, since you already have the drop shadows. Try it out and see if this helps make your map cleaner. For the Vacant places, I recommend using a light gray to distinguish this from your base map, or using a light gray on your base map, and leaving the Vacant places white (color fills are usually more effective at distinguishing information, than outlines.)
– Lastly, the yellow area of the Sun force is too close to the color of Places almost nobody knows and reads as such, until I looked at your force maps. It also is only on the bottom left which makes me wonder, does the rest of area mapped not get any sunlight? Maybe you can take a look at how Q mapped “Karl The Fog” and have a sun icon to represent your sun force. If you leave the sun as just a color fill, I suggest using a different color from Places almost nobody knows, and to label this color in your legend.
I’m looking forward to seeing the updates you listed. I hope this is helpful! 🙂
Hey Greg, so here are some of my thoughts on your maps:
I like how simple and legible your climate map is. However, I can’t tell if the dots are a signifier of one tree but it seems like it takes up all the space between the rows of buildings. Are the planted shade elements organized in a way that aligns walkways or furniture? Otherwise, it seems to just be sprawled across and filling up the entire spaces that aren’t buildings. *Edit: I got to the bottom of your post with the aerial snapshot and I now realize that those trees are the parking lot. So now, I think it would be interesting to explore the separation of planted shades in less foot-traffic dominated areas and vice versa. An indicator that it is the parking lot would also be helpful.
I understand that your dollar signs indicate wealth, but I have a hard time understand it’s correlation to the map such that the green ones are in 3 large groups on 3 specific corners/intersections. For this force map, I think there is greater legibility in the dollar signs you used on the buildings themselves indicating which is a pricier store/restaurant and which is cheaper, using a common expression of price as seen on places like yelp, so that is particularly helpful with prior knowledge.
As for your culture force, I feel as though you can either identify more subcategories (other than performance area & children play area) as the map seems to suggest a very tiny space within the map contains cultural elements. I’d be interested to see if there are “culture” elements that are less obvious but could be perceived as or intended to be multi-purpose in function and leisure/culture/entertainment?
If not, then there is something to be said about an establishment that is much more strictly shopping and dining and possibly less kid-friendly. That would be an interesting absence to portray and explore.
The tourism map is a bit more confusing for me. Although I can assume that the arrows indicate where the Marriott guests are coming from, why 3 arrows? Also, I would suggest continuing the arrow to the closest/most used entrance of the mall to indicate where the flow of tourists enters? Also, one detail that I think would be nice is varying the shade of greens to indicate tourist popularity in those specified businesses. Just from looking at your current map, I would assume that the closest entrance of the mall is where the large block of green is on the right and that would explain a lot. (One critique I got in my original forces map was considering using different colors between the forces so that the synthetic map would be more legible.)
While the Shade map was the clearest, I think the Business map was most interesting because it had the most varying elements shown within a single force. I’m curious to know how you know how well known some places are compared to others (such as places nobody knows or the difference between less people and some people). Although the boldness in color helps tell the different elements instantly, it may be useful to use a range of shades in a single color to emphasis how-well-known (e.g. dark blue > blue > baby blue > light blue > white). This may help when you add it to your synthetic map and will reduce the keys for this force to a single line/spectrum.
Final Map:
For this map, I feel like there was so many different design decisions across each force map that some key information becomes lost. For instance, the sun is no longer labeled/easily recognized as the sun, the arrows that indicate the influx of tourists is buried under the dollar signs. Maybe you can employ the same method of using $ to $$$$$ to signify range? The sun could have a rounder sun-shape with “rays”? I also noticed that you eliminated the trees. Do you plan to include it back in? As for the overlap of tourist hotspots and places people know, I think one way you can resolve that is using stripes of the two colors to indicate the shared forces. But also, this would work better with my previous suggestion of using shades. That way, there is some sort of cohesiveness in reading the force of business-type while being able to identify where tourists go. Lastly, With all the bold colors, outlines, and drop shadows, your cultural forces got drowned out. I would suggest picking a different color from green to make them more distinct and reduce the drop shadows of those businesses.
In terms of the forces you picked, I found them very interesting. Most people don’t notice the “invisible” elements such as shadows/shade and then go about mapping the sources of them. I really appreciate you using drop shadow in the respective direction that would be formed by the sun, so nice touch there! Though, I would suggest lightening the opacity of that shadow or blurring the shadow edges so it is less dominating in your final map. I also find it a bit of a shame that a force with so much potential like culture is limited to such small areas, so hopefully you can find more representative elements. Otherwise, it’ll be interesting to see why it isn’t present instead. Overall, your final map is a bit busy, but I think that is just because you have a lot thought out in each of your force maps. So balancing the load of information would require you to reduce the complexity of individual forces and then manipulate them to work together in the final one without overshadowing one another.
Hi Greg!
I like how you showed Income as a force with dollar signs! That really caught my eye for some reason. You mentioned that you didn’t like how “Culture” was represented on your map. Are there people that stand around and take up the encompassing space? I wonder if there is a way to show that. I also liked the primary colors you picked for your last map, it’s very Mondrian!
Hi Greg, I’ll admit to not caring about some of your forces as much as others. The ones that grab me are the sun/shade and money/people (and maybe stores since commerce is a reflection of status). The culture force, by the look of it, doesn’t seem that forceful. And business types force I felt like you could combine that with your dollar signs since you already mention the types of stores that each group of signs is aligned to, but you haven’t depicted them on the buildings yet. Something like shading the buildings so they correspond to the dollar sign groups might make it easiy to interpret. But I also thought Grace’s comment was spot on.
Funny that you should call out those 2 maps as the ones you liked, since they’re by far my favorites as well. As for the culture force, I chose it because the market itself almost forces it onto the visitors. There’s physical advertisements on signs scattered all over the area saying “Check out our stage, we have events!”Those actually might be more interesting to map rather than the tiny stage and a couple of kids play areas.
Hi Greg,
I enjoyed your maps. Great job depicting your forces!
However, I would recommend color coding the “$” on the buildings. Perhaps you could use a gold for “$”, orange for “$$” and red for “$$$” (just a suggestion). I am also not too sure what the green dollar signs represent.
As for your force about culture, I think you could include some iconography to make it more clear. For instance, you could symbolize performing arts using a symbol of some sort – perhaps even something as simple as a smiley face. You could then indicate that on your map using the symbol rather than the color. Similarly, you could depict the children’s play area as a star (or whatever iconography you choose to use). I think that might help break up it up.
Wish i had read this before updating my map for income. I just made them all blue to stand out a little more, I’m not set on that color though, it was just the first one i clicked. As for the green dollar signs, That is “supposed” to represent the amount of money flowing to the marketplace from the various directions. If you have a better (or even just different) way to represent this, I’d love to hear it since what I’ve got is my only idea.
Greg,
I really like this site choice. I’m impressed with your observation of the east-west corridor. In such a hot climate, strategically designing buildings to minimize the heat of the sun would be very important. Income also seems like an important force in the area but I’m curious how you will map this visually. Can’t wait to see where you go with this!
So basically I tried to show a bunch of money coming from one direction, less from another, and even less from the 3rd. Whats most interesting to me that I didn’t really even think about when doing my initial force decisions, is that the more expensive stuff is the furthest away from the richest people. Maybe they’re going for the “milk effect” (not sure what its called, when they put frequently purchased items far away to make you buy things on the way).
I think that’s an interesting idea, putting items purchasers want further away from purchasers. There are definitely plenty of stores and businesses doing that.
I’m not sure if the income force really comes across in its mapping, however. Although the force is coming from those directions, it’s also most clearly seen in the pricing of the products sold from what you said; “a chocolate shop selling 20 dollar chocolate apples, or a Korean BBQ restaurant selling Wagyu steaks”. What if you created a system for how expensive a store is. Google uses “$” for least expensive, and I think up to “$$$” for most expensive (I could be wrong about that). I could also imagine a system using two colors to represent more expensive stores and less expensive stores. Just a couple of ideas I thought I’d throw out there. I can’t wait to see how it turns out!
I did exactly what you’re suggesting. Did you see the map before you made this comment, or is a reply based on my reply? If you did see the map, I’ll see if i can find a way to make those indications a little more obvious, maybe with color or size.
Ah, you did put that! Sorry Greg, I guess I didn’t look closely enough at the map! I think the bright green dollar signs drew my attention away so I didn’t see it. Maybe making the dollar signs on the stores a color would help them stand out more.
Copy that, appreciate the feedback. How about now? Better?
Greg, I really like the diversity and breadth of the forces you chose. I like that you called out the way different stores appeal to various income-levels and am curious to see how you will map that influence.