Release date: Monday, 07.01.13 - Due date: Sunday, 13.01.13, 23:59

The New York City subway has the biggest number of stations in the world (468 stations), the 2nd longest network and 7th in daily passenger numbers. There have been numberous attempts to design a visualization of the subwaysystem for it's passengers. Below you'll find a picture comparing two visualizations for Mid-Manhattan.

(click to see a bigger sized image)

a.) Discuss advantages and disadvantages of both visualizations (present at least one advantage and disadvantage of each map).

b.) Which map do you favour, explain your choice.

During the lecture, the Gestalt Laws were introduced and a few were explained. Your task is to explain a few not mentioned in the lecture (don't worry, the laws covered in this task are irrelevant for the exam). Write 1-3 sentences for each in your own words, give an example and cite your reference.

a.) Law of Symmetry

b.) Law of Past Experience

c.) Law of Prägnanz

Below is an adjacency matrix for an undirected graph. It is often a challenge to find a good aesthetically pleasing graph drawing. In a usual graph visualization, vertices are represented by some kind of glyph such as a circle, square, etc. with the vertex number inside. Edges are simply lines draw between vertices. You can follow those basics and use them, but you are free to embellish beyond that or come up with a totally different visualization form.

In the end you need to submit two documents. The first one would be the final graph visualization (which should still contain all information from the adjacency matrix). The second document should contain at least a paragraph or two describing your design process and the method or algorithm you used to create the graph (with intermediate states if this helps the argumentation).

We suggest you draw the graph by hand and scan it later. Of course, you are free to use any other method that suits you. Be creative .