INTRODUCTION
In this project, I did a Carto map for my personal interests: Museum and Galleries and Coffee and Tea Shops, so I want to create an index map to display the distribution of museum, galleries and coffee and tea shops in New York City. I also collected the data about Public Art Exhibitions which were or are going to show in New York City from July 18th, 2018 to July 9th, 2020. The challenger for this project is to find the appropriate data and transfer them into the readable format for Carto. Therefore, I used two data source web, New York Open Data and Reference USA to search the data in different ways, for example, ReferenceUSA could provide all kinds of business industries search. The final result shows the distribution and connections between museums and galleries and coffee and tea shops, and it also marks the public art exhibitions location based on the timeline.
INSPIRATION
In the Carto Gallery, I found this example with flash red dots and feel interested in this kind of transitory and bold mark. Therefore, I think this style could represent events which happened over a period of time.
Because the theme is about museums, galleries, coffee, and tea, I did research about map design on Pinterest and find some fresh and sweet color blending, like blue and pink.
Reference 2
TOOLS & DATABASE
New York Open Data: Explore and get open data of Museums and Galleries in New York. Its advantage is that the data package is clean and readable for Carto, for example, the address has already been transferred to longitude and latitude.
Reference USA: Search the NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) of business industries and get open data of Coffee and Tea Shops in New York City. It is a stronger database which is able to provide most of the business data based on NAICS, however, some data need to be edited for Carto.
Google Sheet: Transfer data format to CVS and Geocode location Data. It is a universal tool to clean data, transfer format, and also turn addresses into longitude and latitude.
Carto: Visualize data on Map and make timeline-based animations. It could be used to narrate stories by manipulating data from colors, forms, and timelines.
PROCESS
When I started the project, I searched the keywords “museums”, “galleries”, “coffee”, and “bubble tea” in NYC open data because most data package is clean and readable for Carto. However I only got data about “Museums and Galleries”, so I turned to use ReferenceUSA to search the NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) data for coffee and tea shops. Fortunately, I found the data about Coffee and Tea Shops around America, and I filtered them from New York City. Then I used Google Sheet to Geocode the address into longitude and latitude so that it is able to be read by Carto. I also searched for the data about exhibitions which is going to be held in New York recently as the guide for a day tour in New York City. However, the data package I download about Public Art Exhibition cannot be opened in excel format, so I used Openrefind to transfer it to CSV format for importing in Carto.
RESULTS
Link: https://savi.carto.com/u/lcoug26/builder/b50ab2b8-4513-4068-a564-c8acdcd9078f/embed
In the final result, I colorize Museums and Galleries in light blue and Coffee and Tea Shops in light pink because this color blending is fresh and sweet I got from the design reference. In Museums and Galleries layers, I turn to Blending into multiply because it could show the dark color in dense areas. The Public Art and Exhibition is marked by the flash yellow circles on the map, and there is a timeline table on the bottom of the whole screen to show how many public arts and exhibitions were held every month since July 16th, 2018 to July 15th, 2019.
From the map, we can see museums and galleries are concentrated in the upper east side, west midtown (Chelsea), and around SoHo. Coffee and Tea shops are concentrated in lower Manhattan and Midtown which includes coffee shops like Starbucks and also bubble tea shops. The office buildings are concentrated in lower Manhattan, such as wall street, and Midtown Manhattan so that coffee shops are crowded in these areas. Also, there are a few Asian communities in lower Manhattan and Midtown Manhattan, like Chinatown and East Village, so the bubble tea shops are usually opened in these neighborhoods.
From the timeline, we can see most public arts and exhibitions starting from May 2019. The Geographic map shows that most public arts and exhibitions are concentrated in Manhattan, especially in Midtown Manhattan. Therefore, for who want to go to see public arts and exhibitions in museums and Galleries in one day tour with coffee or bubble tea, I propose Midtown Manhattan is a good choice for them to walk around.
REFLECTION
In this project, I found there are different ways to access all kinds of data, so it is important to collect online sources or search engines for data searching. For example, I cannot find data about Coffee and Tea shops in NYC open data, but I remember I find convenient stores data in ReferenceUSA by NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) before. Therefore, I also found the NAICS for the coffee and tea industries. From this experience, I will keep collecting the open data sources and also notice the other codes which could search data instead of exactly names in the future. From the reference, it is my first time to cooperate color blending in the data visualizations based on its theme. As a designer, I think it is not only about the visual aids to interpret data efficiently but it also creates a fresh mood for audiences to feel the fun of the data.