# Designing Maps for Display; Introduction to ArcGIS StoryMaps

## for GOV 1008 (GIS Mapping)

### Learning Goals
Students will be able to:
- articulate how poster design can help effectively communicate with their audience
- apply design principles to their map design within ArcGIS
- articulate what different design elements communicate to their audience in storymaps.
- create a storymap project from their ArcGIS data

The session was primarily designed to introduce the basic concepts of poster design in preparation for the course's poster celebration at the end of the semester; and to introduce students to StoryMaps to experiment with on their own time. There was no required StoryMaps components of the course, but students were encouraged to use it to share their map work with a broader audience. We also discussed how StoryMaps can be a useful tool for helping them write their essays, as it helps them communicate the core contributions of their analysis.

### Lesson Plan

* **Intro to design principles**
* Introduce card exercise: ask students to share their interpretations of how various blank cards displayed on the board relate to each other, based on their color, size, and position. Summarize their interpretations by identifying the design principle.
* **Contrast**
* show 4 green cards, arranged vertically
* replace the third card with a blue one
* **Repetition**
* show 4 green cards, arranged vertically
*
* **Alignment**
* move one of the aligned cards to the right so that it is slightly indented
* show several other arrangements of cards
* **Proximity**
* show three cards clustered, and one more distant
* **Size**
* show smaller sized card next to the larger ones
* *Summarize*: This game shows that you have intuitions about how to communicate through design; and so do those who are reading your poster; we all have intuitions about how to ‘read’ visual information, so you want to use this to your advantage.
* Applying these design principles
* *Ask students*: How would you use these principles to interpret the kind of information that this poster is trying to communicate?
* Use these design principles when composing your map posters
* There are different types of analysis that you will be doing. Some of you will be doing temporal analysis, comparing how a specific phenomenon transforms over time. Others will be comparing different localities; geographical comparison.
* Others will be using layering of different datasets in order to track how an IV (such as drought) affects a DV (like political outcomes).
* Each of these types of analysis can use design to more effectively communicate the main terms of your analysis
* For example, the poster above is well-suited for comparison of two contrasting cases
* Identify the type of analysis you are conducting to guide your design choices
* E.g. Susceptibility of New Orleans neighborhoods to flooding due to climate change :arrow_right: Temporal comparison
* Housing affordability on East and West coasts :arrow_right: Geographical comparison
* Identifying patterns in wildfire frequency :arrow_right: Comparing different types of data analysis
* Forest cover and election outcomes :arrow_right: Investigating causal relationship between two variables
* 'Draft' your poster design
* Have students use colored cards, scissors, paper, to map out the shape of their poster
* 7 min working independently
* Ask several students to share out, connecting design elements to argument structure

* **Map design principles**
* Introduce principles of design to help students make easy-to-read maps
* Contrast
* Use contrasting colors to help distinguish between types of information presented on the map.
* Use similar colors or different shades of the same color in order to indicate variation of a specific type of data (in this case, prevalence of wildfires)
* Legibility
* Ensure that all relevant place names are easy to read.
* Reduce unnecessary information on the map to make it more legible.
* Hierarchical organization
* Ensure that the most important elements are most visually prominent
* Balance
* Refrain from trying to include too much information in a given map
* **Map design tips**
* **StoryMaps**
* Set up StoryMaps account through ArcGis
* Use [this StoryMap](https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/836b308634524f4397627772b839024e) to explain the basic elements of a scrollytelling story
* setting the scene
* interactive elements
* developing depth
* Do a short exercise with students to design three short elements in storymaps and publish
* New story → side car
* Upload own map
* Create three sections:
* intro/overview
* One side car
* Experiment with zooms
* Experiment with layers