View interactive version in CartoDB

The dataset I chose to work with was the National Public Toilet Map from the Australian government. It contains geolocation information on public and private toilets across Australia, including a variety of supplemental information on access restrictions, hours of operation, and other details that apply to the restrooms. It is an interesting, robust dataset that presents the opportunity for visualization to increase access to public facilities.

From the dataset I was hoping to create a usable map for an area –ideally a tourist destination, and decided to map the available data in the Sydney area. My goal was to make a map that would be interactive within a certain area, hopefully able to be interpreted by visitors unfamiliar with their surroundings. Though limited by the scope of the assignment, I imagined the map functioning as an interface on a public area kiosk, or as a mobile app. As it stands, the functionality is largely on par with how I would like the finalized project to function, though ideally showing the user’s location in relation to the available services.

Filtering by town allowed me to narrow the data to the Sydney area, though I was hoping to be able to limit the visual map to the specific region (I was able to figure out how to hide the zoom controls, but the map is still movable with the keyboard and mouse). The filtered data was then overlaid on one of the flattened world-maps available in CartoDB, in order to show the restrooms in a map with minimal contextual information. My hope was that the minimalistic graphic allows for a quicker reading by distinguishing areas from one another, while a more detailed map can present visual information that may be cluttering and potentially more confusing than helpful.

For the map I simply plotted the longitude and latitude data following the filter by town. This was then represented by the simple plot provided by CartoDB, as I did not find myself able to effectively create anything with the available categories. I opted for the restroom icons available in CartoDB, as I believe they are a symbol that is universally interpreted. If I had been able to figure out how to interpret my data better, I think it would have been useful to have the icons represent genders, as not all of them are accessible for both genders (and the symbol I’ve used shows both a man and woman). The purple color was chosen to be gender neutral, in line with the male/female icon selected.

The info windows provided an opportunity to utilize some of the detailed information, and I felt that the address of the facility and access notes would be among the most the relevant pieces of information for people looking to access the facilities. Unfortunately the data in the address field often did not contain complete addresses, meaning that they could be potentially difficult to navigate to. The data on specific services available at the restrooms, such as baby changing stations, showers, etc. clearly carries some value, but representing them all as additional text fields can easily wind up excessive. Being able to represent them as icons within the window could be an effective alternative, as some of the amenities are common enough to have ISO standards (e.g. handicap accessibility). There was also the issue of empty values rendering as “null”, instead of simply not displaying, which I couldn’t figure out in CartoDB.

Overall, I found CartoDB to be a fairly intuitive tool that was successful in mapping out the basic elements of my data. The available options for customization felt very much in tune with other visual tools I’ve worked with, therefore I was able to create something that I felt was usable while still visually attractive. I think that a lot of the customizations I would’ve liked to do would’ve required a stronger programming / data-handling background, but it appears that CartoDB is able to handle more advanced customizations through the SQL queries and customizable CSS. Mapping the public toilets in Sydney was an interesting exercise, something that I think would be fun to see more of in a world filled with data.