TransitTrace: An Exploration of Visual Encoding for Effective Route Planning Using an Ambient Display

People every day rely on Public Transport Systems for their daily commutes or for their journeys through new cities. The availability and usability of information that are relevant to the traveller is very important to enable wayfinding. Many visualizations exist that support wayfinding, and these visualizations make a transport system easier to use. However, due to the high complexity of the transport networks and the needs of different travelers, designing visualizations that effectively support wayfinding is a challenging task. This thesis presents TransitTrace, an interaction-free visualization designed for ambient displays that enables casual and highly effective exploration of the transit network. The visualization shows current and future movements of transit vehicles in the vicinity of the user, as well as future transfers to other lines. The idioms employed for the visual design allow the user to focus on routes that are relevant to her, even when a high number of routes are displayed. In this way, the visualization can serve multiple users with different needs at the same time. I show how partial trajectory drawing can be used to show connections to transfer lines and how this technique limits the amount of visual clutter. I also explain the usage of an animation that effectively enables route planning. Furthermore, I discuss the complexities of dealing with transit network data, and I describe how the system has been designed to address the various issues. In conclusion, I report a case study to explain how the visualization is used to plan routes, and I discuss limitation of the approach and future work.