Into Subjective Mapping

A subjective map is a map with more details, mostly with narrations, but in a visual form and sometimes even adding some interaction to the map. Its main purpose is to capture and display data. It can be change according to the cartographer’s observations, for example, it doesn’t have to depict the general component of a city, like transportation and such, it can be based on other subject regarding this area as well, something more personal, like the difficulties the travel had encounter or the wonderful events during his travel, etc..

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We had a briefing on what subjective mapping is, then we’ve been shown a few examples, and finally we were told to wander around speak with strangers to collect data.

We did so and the first surprising thing here was how much information you’ll obtain, sometimes it will be things that’s right before your eyes, still you won’t see it, because you’re too busy with your own business.

We were divided into groups and a few information that we obtain was that ss15 was dirty, smelling bad, there was a lot of traffic, however we will also obtain answers such as ss15 is like a playground for the people in Malaysia.

We got a few mixtures of answers as well, such as; a few people would say that they love the bubble tea shop others would say that don’t.

We’ve actually one really interesting information that blame the bubble tea shops for being responsible for the traffic jam in ss15 and the lack of parking as well.

Later on we were asked to combine our data with those of other groups in the class, share our data and come up with a map representing the common points we had.

The other groups had some similar points such as the smell, the dirtiness and all of that, however one group saw cockroaches walking around in the bubble tea shop and the other one had heard a really intriguing point of view.

She’s been told by a lady that there were big corporations that were paying the rent for the bubble tea shops cause they are the trend of today, therefore the other shops, which were not given this privilege were being closed down as the rent kept on increasing they couldn’t afford it. That how the famous bubble tea street of ss15 was created. Therefore a few people was losing their job just so there more bubble tea shop opening up selling the same product in the same street.

We went a lot crazy with the illustration on the subjective map, specially with the cockroaches, but let’s simply call it our personal touch to the illustration to get out of the ordinary.

The bubble actually represents the shops around ss15’s bubble tea streets, through a combination of shapes and colors;

• Triangles are for bubble tea shops

• Squares for food

• Circles for other shops

• Red for die (not working well)

• Purple for the average

• Light blue for working perfectly well

So, for our subjective mapping we’ve decided that we’ll combine the above research and then we thought of even relating it to time, to represent the effects of such imbalance and to create a sort of impact to the viewers.

On the left side, it represents the time being, where the bubble tea shops are working just fine. Moreover there’s a lot of people going towards the shops. We showed how the bubble tea was dominating the other shops in numbers in clients.

On the right, it’s what might actually happen. As you can see all the bubble tea shops are still here yet they are not doing well anymore as there were too many shops selling the exact same product under different names. In this one, the streets are filled with cockroaches to represent the dirtiness and emptiness of the place and furthermore there’s a void at the end of the road to add more emphasis on the end of the era of bubble tea.

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In conclusion, conversation through a survey helps to collect a lot of data. Moreover, a subjective mapping can help represent all these data in a lot of interesting ways, and finally, you can’t always count on your own observation to get all the details of an environment, there’s a lot going on behind the eyes that only a few inhabitants know.

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Finally, I got really inspired by how the trendy thing goes, how it creates like a sort of supremacy even in the business sector, and how it goes behind the eyes of all because people won’t actually called it as an issue, as it has been whitened by the media. There again we can see a negative effect of media on society and business.

After doing this project, I’ve got the idea of basing myself on the anti-materialistic side of thing for my main brief. While exploring ss15 itself, I saw a lot of what could be, the result of a hectic lifestyle. People parking their cars all around without paying attention where they are parking their car, people fighting on the streets because of one of them has stolen the private parking of the other or probably about the bad sides of the media, directly relating to this activity.