Final summary

Summary

I chose to investigate jaywalking in Wellington, New Zealand. People generally make comments like “Oh Wellington has so many jaywalkers, it’s so bad” and I wanted to see if how true this was.

I collected data through tally charts at three significant intersections in the city over three different 15minute periods. I then did a panoramic photo of each of the three intersections, and then used the photos as a reference to do a line drawing of all three intersections together.

Descending off each intersection are lines based on the data I collected.

- White lines appear for every jaywalker recorded
- Grey lines represent people who crossed the intersections legally

Each separate image represents a different hour period, and within each image, the three intersections are portrayed.

I choose to present them like scans, as the slight variations in line density and brightness between the different hours reminded me of the variations you see in things like brain scan images.

Essentially, the brighter areas of the images reflect areas of greater jaywalking. 

Final photos

final data and images

So here is the final data table of collected data (I only did three different hours, as it was taking a lot of time to physically count and collect the data, but i think it's enough to get the idea across).

Intersection	Jaywalkers	Legal Crossing	Total	Jwalk Percentage
8.00am– 9.00am
Willis/Willeston	145	255	400	36%
Willis/Mercer	211	253	464	45%
Guhznee/Cuba	64	110	174	37%
4.00pm – 5.30pm
Willis/Willeston	47	91	138	34%
Willis/Mercer	132	199	331	40%
Guhznee/Cuba	86	257	343	25%
7pm – 8pm
Willis/Willeston	35	12	47	74%
Willis/Mercer	69	50	119	42%
Guhznee/Cuba	73	34	107	68%

and here are the three visualizations together:

Final aesthetic

So I applied the aesthetics I saw in xray scans to my design.

Jwalkers are presented by white lines
Legal walks are grey lines
The original structural white lines are now the foggy grey areas in the back

In this way, you can analyses the data by looking for bright areas. The brighter the sections, the more jwalkers for that intersection.

I also applied some text in the bottom right hand corner which includes the time of day for that particular visualisation, and some grid lines on top and to the left of the visualisation, which correlate to the different sections of the image. I.e, the line on top divides up the three different interesections, and the one going down the side divides up the different parts of the image - the hand drawing, the main section of lines, and the section where all the lines merge towards the middle.

scans

Started thinking about what the final out put format would be for the project. One idea that came up with Elle, was to print them out on transparent paper, and put them in a book format, where they all layered up on each other. In this way, you would be able to look at the graphics from different times of day on top of each other and see an overall view, and then you could also look at them individually.

I liked this idea, but ran into trouble trying to implement it. For it to work, I felt like i needed the background to be completely transparent. According to processing.org, i needed to use createGraphics() and a bunch of other stuff to create an image with a transparent background, but we couldn't get this to run.

But then I had an alternate version of the same idea, which was to do them as if they were scans - kind of like xray scans of the different times of day. So i looked up some images of xrays for reference on the colour/look.

Looking at a bunch of scans, some common factors included having a foggy greyish background layer (where the flesh and things are) and then having the bones and details in brighter greys/whites, with some areas accented with very a bright white colour.



You also see the use of lines on the outside of the scans, to section of pieces or highlight important areas. Like to the right of the brain scans above. A lot of them also use a bit of text.

refined lines and colour

Feedback I got at this point suggested that the white lines were perhaps to strong and took too much attention away from the coloured lines - which are related to the important data.

So i did some trials to try and find the best balance between the brightness and thickness of the white lines.

I was also told it looked a bit christmas-y (in terms of colour) which I agreed with, so i pushed the colour a bit further away from the greens and reds of trafflic lights. At this point i'm still keeping them as variations of green/red because it relates strongly to the concept (in terms of the green and red walking man lights).

Here's the current state, with the adjusted white lines and colour.

white lines

I also realised one of the issues with the colours not looking quite right is the fact that i have them on a completely black background. Having it slightly more grey makes it look a lot nicer and not so contrasty.

I then repeated some of my earlier explorations with the new white lines in there as well...

and i felt my favourite is when the lines from each intersection move towards the centre, but only barely cross each other. I think this provides a nice overall shape, and ties them together, without looking messy or confusing.







Also looks quite nice with a gradient background, but im not sure if that will stay to the end or not yet.

composition disconnection

I felt there was still a disconnection between my drawn city lines and the data based lines, so I decided to add in a layer of white lines as a structural base for the coloured lines.

In terms of data, there is only 2 main parts (legal vs jwalk) so it's hard to give the line a specific meaning, but i did decide on having 15 white lines per intersection as i recorded data at each one for 15minutes.

The white lines add a constant white element between the data lines and the hand drawn lines.

lines drifting towards centre

The most interesting idea that came out of my experiments was to have all the lines drift inwards towards the centre as the move down the screen. The reason i liked this is because it begins to tie the whole thing together as a whole composition, rather than having these largely separated strands of lines.

variable experiments

 

Here i just did a few experiments with different variables, to see if any interesting results or ideas came about. I thought about trying to evoke a paint aesthetic like in my 2nd project, but it didn't have anywhere the near same effect with these colours or because i'm using lines and not ellipses. 

bad colours and white background

I then started applying the second lot of data (the legal crossing) to see how it'd look. I sampled colours from the traffic lights from my photos for the colour, which looks a bit disgusting.

I thought perhaps it might look better on a white background, but that didn't help much. It's perhaps even worse...

angles and random ends

I had a look at having the lines come out on angles, inline with the roads.

But i preferred having them come straight down. I felt as though there is a tree root like quality to them, and having them all come down relatively in the same direction makes it feel more natural and cohesive together. When they stick out at angle's the feel too separate from each other.

When they were all straight down line this, i saw the next problem was that the endings at the bottom was way to artificial and abrupt, as all the lines ended at exactly the same point. Therefore i added randomness to where they finished, which is much nicer.

line development

I then began to drop the lines into the drawing. At this point, I was just using only the jwalker data, and not the legal as well. Just until i got the general composition right.

 When i put the second row in (below), i noticed how it's a bit weird because on the left hand intersection, there is an 'island' drawn below it, so the lines go behind it and you can only see the red on the actual road. Whereas because the space below the second and third intersections is empty, the lines can't be hidden so much at the bottom.

But i figured I could just work with this, and perhaps have it even more dramatic and have the lines continue down the page. So I did that.

I then realised the lines weren't quite incorporated into the drawing very well, and i thought i could solve that by havin them pass in front of lower parts of the drawing, so there is more of a 3dimensional element to it, rahther than the red lines being in the background and the city drawing in the foreground.

Making the lines

This was a quick test of concept again, for having a different number of things representing the different number or jwalkers etc.. In this case it's just ellipses, but they will become lines. I was also testing how easy it was to control both the randomness and position of the ellipses, in relation to the three intersections, and what constraints i'd need to keep the different sections in the right place and not running over each other too much.

After that test, i worked out how to make my lines. I went for the zig-zag aesthetic because to me it feels like a path, and although when crossing the road you would probably more likely take a straight path, i felt the zigzag is more interesting to look at.

So here are the tests..

panoramic photos and drawing

I did panoramic photos of the three intersections at which I collected my data. These would then become reference photos.

I aligned the photos into as much of a continuous street as I could..

 And then drew over the top, and filled in the gaps with my own buildings/lines.

deciding on concept

I settled on the idea of doing line paths along the road, to represented jaywalkers and legal crossing. I also decided on using a line aesthetic for the buildings/road and did this test of concept (above).

I thought about overlaying it on actual photos, but the lines felt strangely out of place on the photo. So i decided to stick to line drawing. for everything

data collecting 1

Data collection so far... still not sure what this information will go towards, but hopefully it all leads to something...

To collect the data, i've been hanging out at the intersections and keeping tally of jaywalkers vs legal crossings. Naturally, the results are not 100% accurate, as it's impossible to accurately keep track of every single person. It's also not possible to simple film the intersections, because there is often 3 or 4 roads to keep track of (hence an intersection...)

Intersection	Jaywalkers	Legal Crossing	Total	Jwalk Percentage
4.00pm – 5.30pm
Willis/Willeston	47	91	138	34%
Willis/Mercer	132	199	331	40%
Guhznee/Cuba	86	257	343	25%
6.30 – 730pm
Willis/Willeston	35	12	47	74%
Willis/Mercer	69	50	119	42%
Guhznee/Cuba	73	34	107	68%

Intersection	Time between green lights	Clearance time (for a green light)
Willis/Willeston	45seconds	5seconds
Willis/Mercer	1.05minutes	7-15 seconds
Guhznee/Cuba	1.00 – 1.15	5-7 seconds

and some photos of the silly car dodging people...