For this week’s assignment, I chose to study the DH mapping project Locating London’s Past. This project aims to help people find information pertaining to modern and eighteenth century London, and map it out over either a 18th century map or a modern Google map. This site works by having the user choose from a list of data sets (ex. Old Baileys, London Lives, Museum of London Archaeology, and more) and adding this to the map so that the viewer can see the information laid out on top.
This method lets the user see the statistical information laid out and separated in a visual way instead of having to look at a list of names, numbers, and dates. The map is very useful when wanting to discover information regarding government numbers around the city of London, and it lets its users explore their data from a vast number of years. However, it becomes quite clear that the site was designed for someone who knows exactly how to use it already. The project is built in a way that you can only see the statistical numbers when the datasets are overlaid onto the map, but in order to learn the context or information surrounding that dataset, the user has to dig deeper into the site and find the original dataset. The site also does not easily help you achieve results you may have wanted to find out by using the project. Instead they have links ready to “help you interpret your information.” This then takes you to a page that has many instructions on how to use the site and how to effectively understand what you are seeing. This can be unhelpful and misleading to people if they are just playing around with the map. A more useful map would have been one with clearer directions on what the user is looking at, and one with more information overall. Instead of just a dropdown menu for a dataset, it would be nice to have a way to see why or what information would be best to look at first, so then the user could make an educated choice in what they want to see. It would make the site a lot friendlier to use for someone who has just stumbled across the page and does not know exactly what they want to see.