Introduction
For this particular assignment, I chose five buildings on campus that I frequent, and created a heat map depending on how often I visit each building per week. I chose these five buildings because there is a wide range of how often I frequent each place, and they varied in function (academic, athletic, and a student center). I also chose to add labels with the numerical data for how often I generally visit each building every week. I organized this information in this spreadsheet, which I later added to my map. Here is my embedded map:
Background and Process
I had some prior experience with using ArcGIS to tell a personal story, as I was a part of the Paris OCS program, where for our final project, we created a Story Map of the city. However, the choices I made for this particular project differed much more, as this project had more readily available quantitative data points. One of my more difficult choices was figuring out how to visually display frequency, particularly non-numerically. I ended up using the heat map style choice, as it did not overwhelm the areas of the buildings, and is something that is easily digestible visually. I also added labels with my exact weekly frequency, as I thought it could help clarify my data.
Final Thoughts
The ArcGIS platform is particularly interesting as it allows for a lot of creative liberty, and can be used in both subjective and objective projects (such as displaying my favorite buildings on campus or displaying the evolution of Northfield’s city planning). Web mapping is also particularly effective as it is interactive for the viewers, there are many things to click on and read, and engaging colors. It definitely is an engaging way of displaying DH work!
2 thoughts on “Webmapping: Further Exploration”
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I think you have some great insights about the platform and applications for it. I’m jealous that you have some past experiences with the ArcGIS software because I really struggled with all of the different possible actions. I would love to see the map you made for your Story of the City project – that seems like such a fun way to end the experience.
Grace, I really like your choice of using a heat map to represent how often you frequent certain spaces on campus, I can see clearly that you spend a lot of time in West Gym. Additionally, I think your point about the intractability of these maps is a great one. It’s much easier to be engaged when there’s things that the user can change or click on themselves.