Cameron gave a very thoughtful and thorough response:
http://transitmaps.tumblr.com/post/80198563319/boston-govt-center
tl;dr:
Cameron Booth said:
It’s actually kind of frightening that two paragraphs of text on the MBTA website can do a better job of explaining the bypass than this map can — a visual medium should really be able to explain this so much more clearly than a text-based or verbal solution ever could.
Also, he mixed up my name. =P
Sorry, I seem to always be late to the things that are relevant to my interests... perhaps continuation is better suited to the MBTA customer service thread...
This seems to be the general gist of MBTA's communication skills. They seem to err too far on the side of providing too much information in an earnest attempt to provide context while completely drowning out the most important information. That was why I embarked on this multi-year effort to
get signage revamped with a
design of my own. Now the T at least uses their own slight modification of my signage for this stuff, but it's the content that matters.
I once spoke to one of the T's chief map makers and he seemed to not take criticism very well about design and information required in context. I've heard numerous criticism from some people that the maps in stations are too pared down - I blame that more on how piecemeal the wayfinding signage system has become and how it's easy for people to miss pieces of information, even when they're placed at critical decision junctions. It's possible for this map that he overcompensated for that based on concerns and complaints other departments have gotten about directing customers during diversions and we ended up with a map that is inappropriately used for the two main contexts required to explain the station shutdown: 1) principally how the train routing is changing and 2) secondarily how to get to a nearby station.
The Globe's map is marginally better, though I somewhat understand the need to include the surrounding grid and street names. I think it was really lazy to simply pull an existing map with all the subtle complexities of the non-landmark buildings and how they sit on their plots.
As a mild consolation, the service advisory signs in the template I designed are slightly less gruesome, but only by the sheer fact that they're only trying to convey path re-routing for one line rather than trying to convey the whole project scope in one map. The maps are still
WAAAAY too busy.
I'm also a little frustrated with how piecemeal the
signage on site feels. They could've easily done a vinyl wrap on the boards to make it look less like a giant blue eyesore and make the signage feel more incorporated and less like islands of information. I still really don't like how the
project information board is just PR fluff with no quick links to project completion dates, source of funding, or even cost of construction. These numbers aren't nebulous, but they may as well be. Even on the
project web site, the whole page is just awash with text,
the 'summary' PDFs are a joke - just a massive block of text, and still no mention of cost.
It's also really cute that they're individually adding each photo of the project to the page. What is this? 1998? Even
MassDOT has a Flickr even if it is mostly used for scant, self-gratifying press photos.
Maybe I'll redesign the signage and web site if I'm lying in bed wide awake tonight just thinking about this...
/rant
