PROJECT OVERVIEW
PUBLICATIONS
PROTOTYPES
EVALUATION
PEOPLE
EVENTS

Prototypes : Bus Composition
The Bus Composition is a visualization of bus departures from a bus stop on bus line 16 in Gothenburg, Sweden. The visualization design is the last in a series that is inspired by the compositions of the Dutch artist Piet Mondrian.

Each bus is represented by a colored square in the visualization. Two buses in each direction is shown simultaneously. The appearance of the squares changes depending on real time data about the bus.

  • Size: is affected by the amount of time that remains before the bus leaves the Lindholmen bus stop
  • Position: is affected by the direction the bus is traveling. The two squares on the left represent buses headed for Eketrägatan and the two on the right represent buses headed for the city center.
  • Color: indicates your "catch status" for a particular bus, where:
    • Blue - you have plenty of time. It's too early to leave for the bus.
    • Yellow - start packing up your stuff and leave for the bus.
    • Red - hurry up! Leave right now if you want to catch the bus.
    • White - too late to catch this bus. You'll have to wait for the next one.
The blue line on the right is added as a mnemonic for the mapping. The line represents the river running through Göteborg, Göta Älv, and is static. During rush hour traffic extra shuttle buses are used between Lindholmen and the Central Station in order to offload the regular buses. Some people want to travel past the Central Station and as way to tell the normal and shuttle buses apart, the black lines from the two squares on the right indicate the buses' final destinations. These lines - the ones that cross the big blue "river" line - either end in a small "loop",indicating that the bus is a shuttle that stops at the central station, or run all the way to the edge of the screen, indicating that the bus is an ordinary bus.

Should no reliable data be available for the visualization, e.g. due to network problems, all of the squares will turn black.

The design of the visualization is described in the paper Between Aesthetics and Utility: Designing Ambient Information Visualizations, presented at InfoVis 2003

Bus Composition
Weather Composition
Forecast Composition
E-mail Composition
Motion Painting
Stone Garden
Objective/Subjective Time
Campbell Clock
Activity Wallpaper