These include technical reports, informal articles, and other documents which have something useful to say, or provide a summary of arguments given in more detail elsewhere. If any of these are superseded they will be removed from this listing, but will continue to be hosted on this website, and so they are safe to link to.
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Roberts, M.J. (2024). Round in Circles and Back Again:
Updating my London Underground Concentric Circles and Spokes MapUnpublished pamphlet. I talk about my London Concentric Circles and Spokes Map: why and how I created the original back in January 2013, what I learnt from it and why I returned to the design in July 2024 to update it. I also talk about how my information design priorities have changed with time.
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Roberts, M.J. (2024). Searching for shape:
Circles on transit maps through time.Unpublished pamphlet. This article looks at the use of circles to depict line trajectories as a method of making complex transit maps easier to comprehend. It highlights some historical designs and then investigates attempts to combine circles with spokes to improve coherence, with a focus on some of my own work. This is a reworking and updating of my 2013 web article: The Story of Circles Maps.
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Roberts, M.J. (2024). Artificial Intelligence:
The harder you try to define it the more you understand it.Unpublished pamphlet. Artificial Intelligence is difficult to define but
the various attempts over the decades can be placed in one of three categories: task-based, behaviour-based and process-based. A perfect definition of Artificial Intelligence might be difficult or impossible to attain, but the very act of attempting to formulate one increases our understanding.
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Roberts, M.J. (2024). Quantitative versus qualitative user research.
Part 2: The paradox of affinity diagrams.Unpublished pamphlet. Affinity diagram analysis is a popular way of making sense of qualitative data. It is intended to bootstrap conceptual frameworks but, unfortunately, a fatal logical flaw in the methodology means that the people who need it the most are least likely to get good results using it.
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Roberts, M.J. (2024). Quantitative versus qualitative user research.
Part 1: Swings and roundabouts.Unpublished pamphlet. Many people complain that quantitative
research methods have issues that can be resolved using qualitative methods, with the added benefit of richer data that give better
insights into behaviour. However, qualitative methods merely camouflage rather than solve the issues, and produce data that are inherently difficult to understand, reducing the impact of the richness.
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Roberts, M.J. (2019). Amsterdam: From Tramageddon to Metromorphosis.
Unpublished pamphlet. In 2018, the new North-South metro
commenced operation in Amsterdam. Alongside this, numerous
changes were made to the tram network. Unfortunately, these
weren’t explained and justified as well as might have been expected.
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Roberts, M.J. (2011). How to create a topographically reasonable Underground Map.
Unpublished pamphlet. Step-by-step instructions for creating
a variable-scale schematic map that is compact but accurately preserves relative station placement. Try it for your own city!
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Roberts, M.J. (2010). Future directions for the Washington, DC Metro map.
Unpublished report. For a while, it looked as though Washington, DC, was considering an open competition in order to redesign its Metro map. I prepared an unsolicited discussion document for them, and never heard back. Maybe they should have paid more attention to it, the current official map continues to be famous and iconic for all the wrong reasons! The overall methodology I proposed would be useful for any city considering an overhaul of its design.
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Roberts, M.J. (2009). Henry Beck rules, not OK? Breaking the rules of diagrammatic map design.
Unpublished manuscript. This paper was originally written as an invited submission to the now-defunct journal, Aesthesis. It is obsolete, superseded by my book Underground Maps Unravelled, and so please do not cite this without contacting me first. It is still available because it is a useful short introduction to the challenges that face schematic map designers: Are Henry Beck’s design rules really the best for all possible transport maps?
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Roberts, M.J. (2008). Information pollution on the Underground Map.
Informal web article. An analysis of an official London Underground map from the late 2000s, when standards of design were dismal, and users were being bombarded with a high quantity of low quality information. Designs have improved since then, but this article is a warning of what can go wrong when attention to detail lapses.
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Roberts, M.J. (2008). The challenges of implementing Henry Beck’s unpublished prototypes.
Unpublished pamphlet. Discusses the difficulties in taking Beck’s unimplemented drawings of the Paris Metro and the London railway network, and attempting to convert these into as-might-have-been-published maps.
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Roberts, M.J. (2008). London Underground Map myths.
Informal web article. A number of commentators on Henry Beck and the London Underground map have not done their research properly, recycling various myths and legends. Even people who should know better such as academics and museum curators make the same old mistakes. By 2008 I had discussed twelve of these. You might not agree with my analysis, but at least think before you repeat one of these.