Praxis I Assignment – Caroline Kelly

Interpretation of the Assignment

With the limitless potential of “Create a map of something that is not necessarily -or traditionally thought of as – mappable” my approach to this assignment was most driven to map something not typically represented in the physical world and one that I find most difficult to articulate, my internal thought process.  Though the assignment was open-ended the limiting agent was technical ability. 

Ideas

I vacillated between doing something meaningful such as the disparity of services to children with disabilities or something I already have a strong grasp of the data such as the identification of a painting.

I was most interested in creating a visualization of a thought or an idea map that could not just illustrate the connection between different ideas and symbols that exist in an internal schema but also evoke the same sensation.

 

Thoughts on Maps

Thoughts on Maps

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Selecting the Mapping Tool

I played around with Prezi, Google Earth, ArcGIS, Esri Story Maps, and Tableau. 

My mapping goals were:

1. Be Interactive 
2. Display Photos with accompanying text
3. Be atmospheric
4. Link the ideas to be somewhat coherent while maintaining distance
5. Ability to overlap items on top of the map (this had to be abandoned)

With limited Java ability for Leaflet and the nausea-inducing effects of Prezi – I ended up using both ArcGIS Story Maps and Tableau. 

Designing the Map

I let the technology dictate how I would illustrate the structure of an internal thought process. Memory plays such a big part in the way we think about things that the narrative nature of the Story Map would provide needed structure.

I also approached the building of the map like a painting focusing on the palette and atmosphere instead of accurately depicting reality. In Esri I selected a base map
“Firefly Imagery Hybrid” for its dark appearance that could be like the internal world of the mind or even an MRI. 

Memories don’t usually include country or state boundaries so I removed them from the reference layer. I maintained the representation of streets and buildings as they are part of a sense of a place and one’s place in it.  

I structured the narrative somewhat autobiographically with places and thoughts on cartographic subjects such as the Center of the World, Internal Worlds, Stars, Models, the Human Body, Organizational Structure and tied them in with locations from my neighborhood, school, places I’ve traveled and worked. 

Still, I felt this was lacking and a Map of a Thought about Maps was far too meta even for me. 

I also created an infographic that is rooted in the present and future. For this I used Tableau. I found minimal data from “The Status of NYC Children” on the data.ccc.newyork.org website for services received by children in New York City’s Early Intervention Program, a federally mandated program that provides services to children with developmental delays and disabilities. I also utilized NYC Data to find demographic information on the population of children in each borough.

Problems

Being a novice in all of these platforms created a steep and time-consuming learning curve and the limitations in access as an unpaying customer in Esri limited a lot of the functioning I wanted. I was frustrated by the poor graphic design and editing features in Acris. I was not successful in putting what I wanted visually in the parameters of the mapping platform and was disappointed that the story progressed in a linear structure. 

For the Tableau portion, I was very restricted by the data shared by the government and non-profit agencies and could not report on the discrepancies that exist in the borough and racial demographics for children needing critical medical services. Other agencies reported FOIL requests for their dataset. I also had a lot of issues getting data from the census converted to zipcode and ended using the layer on Tableau. 

I also experienced self-censorship due to the permanence and public nature of posted assignments. I wish I had spent more time developing skills in one of the mapping platforms instead of first thinking about what I should do. I wish I had added many more data points for the map that went across the globe. Also, Google Earth may have been a better option for synthesizing that internal cinematic effect. 

Going Forward

I will be working on the data for Early Intervention Services and doing a FOIL request as this also relates to my professional life. I am still deeply interested in mapping ideas and want to focus more on the interactive element of the viewer and developing the technical skills to do so.