Photo by PlanetEye

A recent article in the New York Times by Alice Rawsthorn highlights the role of visualizing community information for the benefit of sociological research. However the article was not looking at a contemporary example, instead it featured an example from 1886. Charles Booth of London created a series of maps from 1886 to 1903 that featured a color coding system to visualize the different socioeconomic situations of residents in the city. The article points out that these maps helped to draw attention to the growing problem of poverty in London.

The article celebrates Booth’s work as an example of effective information design where large amounts of information where placed into a structure that made it easy for the user to navigate and process.

By making something so complicated seem straightforward, Booth’s Poverty Map was also a triumph of information design. It fulfilled one of design’s most useful functions — helping us to make sense of the world — by distilling an avalanche of information into a clear, coherent form.

Already in 1886 Booth saw the power of effective design in helping to make sense of large quantities of information. In 2010, we are faced with the same challenge of finding ways to organize and contextualize the large amounts of information that are produced everyday. City managers are turning to Geographic Information Systems while Neighborhood associations are using google maps to present users with the locations of resources.

Visualizing information, or in this situation more specifically, mapping information, gives people an overhead view of what is happening in their environment. Rather than asking people to sift through information that has been extracted from its context, information that is organized and presented through a map helps give the user a starting point that returns information to its place of origin.