Folding experience into paper maps

Two recent projects that incorporate the experiences of map users into the subsequent versions of the maps:

1. For the Salone di Mobile event in Milan, The British Council commissioned a map of the event that would be augmented each day with information flowing in from Flickr, Twitter, blogs, and people’s physical scribbles on the maps.

One thing that’s very interesting to us that is using this rapidly-produced thing then becomes a ‘social object’: creating conversations, collecting scribbles, instigating adventures - which then get collected and redistributed.

More information about the project is available on The Incidental site.

2. Walking Maps, produced by Mike Migurski at Stamen, encourages people print out maps from OpenStreetMap, annotate them with missing information, and scan them back in.

In some places, participants are creating the first freely-available maps by GPS survey. In other places, such as the United States, basic roads exist, but lack local detail: locations of traffic signals, ATMs, caf’es, schools, parks, and shops. What such partially-mapped places need is not more GPS traces, but additional knowledge about what exists on and around the street. Walking Papers is made to help you easily create printed maps, mark them with things you know, and then share that knowledge with OpenStreetMap.

• design
• maps
• mikemigurski