Misrepresenting the truth to make traveling easier

Transforming maps into diagrams can help speed up travelers’ comprehension, but requires removing many factual details. How do we know what hurts and what helps?

Recently, I worked with the Port Authority of NY & NJ to design new wayfinding and train arrival displays for the AirTrain at JFK Airport. (A link to the complete project case study is at the end of this article.)

Here, I’ve broken down a what I found to be a difficult piece of the puzzle — figuring out how to best represent the AirTrain system in a small on-screen space.

While working on the project, I challenged myself to meet this goal: Answer the question “Can I get to my destination on this train?” in under 5 seconds.

A natural starting point was thinking about the map of the full system, which immediately and clearly failed to meet that goal: