MITSUBISHI ELECTRIC RESEARCH LABORATORIES

http://www.merl.com

Mapping Psychological and Virtual Spaces

Carol Strohecker

TR98-12 December 1998

Abstract

WayMaker s a tool enabling non-professionals to create digital layouts for large-scale graphical
virtual environments. The design tool is based on e lements of the city imageas described by the
urban planner, Kevin Lynch (1960). Ultimately, WayMaker should be situated within a virtual
environment so that output from the tool is transformed as extensions to the virtual world. Here
we describe an initial prototype that simulates a virtual domain through a series of composited
frames. Our work with users informs continued development of the tool. We also plan usage
studies conducted from a cognitive science perspective, examining issues of constructive learning
and spatial cognition.

Online Proceedings of Design Computing on the Net, sponsored by the International Journal of
Design Computing, 1998

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the following: a notice that such copying is by permission of Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Inc.; an acknowledgment of
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Copyright
c Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Inc., 1998
201 Broadway, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139
MERLCoverPageSide2
 MERL - A MITSUBISHI ELECTRIC RESEARCH LABORATORY

Mapping Psychological and Virtual Spaces

Carol Strohecker
MERL - A Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratory,
Cambridge, Massachusetts

Barbara Barros
MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning;
StrataVarious Software, Boston, Massachusetts

Adrienne Slaughter
MERL - A Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratory;
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

TR98-12 September 1998

Published in Design Computing on the Net '98, International Journal of Design Computing, 1998.

Abstract

"WayMaker" is a tool enabling non-professionals to create digital layouts for

large-scale graphical virtual environments. The design tool is based on "elements
of the city image" as described by the urban planner, Kevin Lynch (1960).
Ultimately, WayMaker should be situated within a virtual environment so that
output from the tool is transformed as extensions to the virtual world. Here we
describe an initial prototype that simulates a virtual domain through a series of
composited frames. Our work with users informs continued development of the
tool. We also plan usage studies conducted from a cognitive science perspective,
examining issues of constructive learning and spatial cognition.

This work may not be copied or reproduced in whole or in part for any commercial purpose. Permission to
copy in whole or in part without payment of fee is granted for nonprofit educational and research purposes
provided that all such whole or partial copies include the following: a notice that such copying is by
permission of MERL - A Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratory, of Cambridge, Massachusetts; an
acknowledgment of the authors and individual contributions to the work; and all applicable portions of the
copyright notice. Copying, reproduction, or republishing for any other purpose shall require a license with
payment of fee to MERL - A Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratory. All rights reserved.

Copyright MERL - A Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratory, 1998

201 Broadway, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139
 Long ago the urban theorist Kevin Lynch pointed out the fundamental
relationship between human cognition and urban form the importance of the
learned mental maps that knowledgeable locals carry about inside their skulls.
These mental maps, together with the landmarks and edges that provide
orientation within the urban fabric, are what make a city seem familiar and
comprehensible.
(Mitchell, 1995, p.43)

In The Image of the City (1960), Kevin Lynch describes how people "image" the city
that is, how they create and remember mental images of the large-scale environments in
which they live. He focused on how people think about the structure of their cities. From
verbal and pictorial accounts, he derived five basic elements of the city image: districts,
paths, edges, nodes, and landmarks.

Although mental images are individualistic, Lynch found that people represent certain
city elements consistently. Districts are broad regions, such as neighborhoods, that have
some common, identifying character such as brick sidewalks or rows of brown-stone
buildings. Paths are the channels along which people move; they may be narrow like
sidewalks or wide like roads. Edges are distinct boundaries between one region and the
next; they may function as barriers or seams. Nodes are strategic points, foci to and from
which people travel. Landmarks are punctuation points used for general orientation; they
may be distant or local.

Urban planners and designers recognize the usefulness of these elements not just in
reflecting on the structure of the city, but also in creating it. Lynch's elements are
insufficient to characterize the experience of an urban environment. However,
professionals assume that a well-designed, "imageable" city incorporates the elements
that Lynch articulated (Banerjee & Southworth, 1990; Lynch, 1981). Thus, by basing
WayMaker on Lynch's elements, we are drawing from well-honed practice as well as
addressing a current problem in virtual environment design: as virtual environments
become more commonplace, a greater variety of people will be involved in developing
them.

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Participants in text-based multiuser environments like "MUDs" and "MOOs" typically
interact with each other, but also with the environment. They use an associated
programming language to construct characters, objects, and spaces within the virtual
domain (Curtis, 1992; Rheingold, 1993; Bruckman & Resnick, 1995; Mitchell, 1995;
Turkle, 1995; Bruckman, 1997). However, this constructive component is not easily
transferred to graphical environments. The tools for developing images and structures
tend to be complex and sophisticated, often requiring professional expertise in order to
produce a satisfying result. Yet, graphical virtual environments are emerging as milieus
with potential for broad use in learning, entertainment, and socializing (Benedikt, 1991;
Anderson et al., 1995; Shaw, 1995; Darken, 1996; Darken, & Sibert, 1996; Moshell &
Hughes, 1996; Strohecker, 1997; Strohecker & Barros, 1997). Clearly we need to develop
easily usable tools to support participants' interactions, including world construction,
navigating, and wayfinding.

WayMaker users work directly with representations of Lynch's elements. Each symbol
corresponds to an aspect of city form. The five basic symbols represent districts, paths,
edges, nodes, and landmarks.

Placing the symbols to develop a map-like diagram, the user assumes a bird's-eye view
and imagines the virtual domain at large scale. The user can modify the symbols to
specify details such as the visual character of districts and landmarks. In the illustration
below, WayMaker's pictorial vocabulary indicates relative placements and sensory
attributes of three elements within a district. A triangle becomes a landmark representing
a memorable building, and an edge demarcates the end of the observer's path. The
software transforms the user's design into street-level scenes representing a walk through
the domain. For the initial prototype we worked with reproductions of paintings by Paul
Czanne to form the street-level scenes.

Painting and photograph excerpts from Machotka (1996). Painting: Ferme Montgeroult, 1898.

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Lynch's elements can be found in the context of city renditions such as those by Czanne.
Many of his works comprise studies of the relationship of the built to the natural
environment. His impressionistic imagery lends itself to our technique of compositing
simulated views through a virtual domain.

Painting reproduction from Machotka, P. (1996): Gardanne (l'aprs-midi), 1885-86.

To begin designing an image of the virtual space, the user simply drags symbols into the
working area.

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District, edge, and path symbols can be stretched and curved to assume various shapes.
Nodes and landmarks can be placed anywhere in the diagram as elements to be
encountered along the walkways.

This fully developed layout includes all five elements placed relative to one another.
Menu specifications for nodes, landmarks, and districts fill the corresponding symbol
with an indication of imagery the software will use in the final walkway sequence. Paths,
landmarks, and nodes are available in two sizes: a path may function as boulevard or
alley; large landmarks can appear as towers; small landmarks can become smaller
buildings or banners marking points of interest.

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Users can select from reproductions of the Czanne paintings in order to specify the
character of a given district. For the walkthrough, the software uses excerpts from the
paintings in automatic compositions of street-level scenes.

Painting reproductions are from Machotka, P. (1996). Clockwise, from top right: Ferme Montgeroult,
1898; Maisons en Provence le vallon de Riaux prs de l'Estaque, 1882-83; Le Moulin sur la Couleuvre
Pontoise, 1881; Les Marrioniers du Jas de Bouffan en hiver, 1885-86; Route tournante la Roche-Guyon,
1885; Le Chteau de Mdan, 1879-80; Haneau Payennet prs Gardanne (formerly La Sainte-Victoire,
Environs de Gardanne), 1885-86; L'Eglise Saint-Pierre Avon (formerly Une rue Aix), 1891-92; La
Maison de Bellevue, c. 1890.

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The classic perspectivist framework consists of a ground, sky, and side planes, which are
defined by diagonals that converge on a vanishing point along the horizon in the back
plane. We use this framework as the basis for automatic compositions of street-level
views. Each scene in a walkthrough of the virtual domain is comprised of side planes,
ground, back, and sky. Added detail helps to ensure variety: silhouetted images crown the
back plane, and side planes may consist of bases, facades, and/or roofs.

Czanne's Ferme Montgeroult presents a scene with a certain structural character: the
terrain is smooth and relatively flat; each side of the street is covered evenly with
buildings; building facades often have distinguishable bases and rooftops. We
incorporated these observations into a framework that characterizes Czanne's scene and
WayMaker districts associated with it. Each component is represented as a set of variable
coordinates to be filled with an appropriate excerpt from the painting.

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To generate variety within each district, we established ranges within which the number
and measure of scene components can change. These ranges are consistent with the
character of the associated painting. WayMaker automatically composes walkway scenes
by placing image excerpts within such variations of the district's structural framework.

Variation also occurs from district to district, as the composition of side panels changes.
The number and measure of bases, facades, and roofs are peculiar to each district. Each
painting's framework suggests certain relationships: side to side, roof to facade, facade to
base, base to ground, back to ground, etc. Differences in these relationships contribute to
the richness of WayMaker's simulated virtual worlds.

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When the user has finished specifying details of the layout, s/he can click the sneaker
icon to change modes and indicate a walkway route through the environment.

The user clicks the tip of the walkway ribbon to trigger calculation, assemblage, and
display of a corresponding sequence of street-level scenes. The software ascertains which
district the walkway is traversing, selects the appropriate framework, draws from the
associated database of images in order to fit components into corresponding parts of the
framework, varies the framework and again fills it with image components, and continues
this process to the end of the walkway. The result is a series of scenes in a simulated
virtual world.

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Thus the user-designed map undergoes three transformations. The representation changes
from a diagram composed of abstract symbols to recognizable, though impressionistic,
imagery. The view changes from bird's-eye to street-level. The scale changes from that of
a city, town, or region to that of a human stroll.

Further Work

We believe that the best way to support users in appreciating these transformations is to
provide simultaneous displays of the map and the walkthrough scenes (c.f. Brooks,
1986). In our continued development of the prototype, we are changing the display so
that it indicates each scene's location within the diagram as the walkway sequence plays
out. This double display should emphasize the connection between user-created diagrams
and the constructed virtual world. We are also developing a new approach that will
eliminate the step of adding the walkway ribbon, and enable users to follow in the
walkthrough the same paths they have placed in creating their diagrams. Other
improvements include refined placement of nodes and landmarks within the views, and
the addition of bursts of sounds and images to suggest human activity associated with
nodes.

WayMaker diagrams could be associated with any number of prepared databases,

yielding any number of apparent worlds. We have implemented the prototype on a
personal computer and are using two-dimensional imagery for both the construction kit
and the walkthrough sequences. WayMaker could easily use alternate 2D databases for
the walkthrough scenes. For example, we could develop image databases from Picasso
paintings or sets of photographs instead of the Czanne imagery. Furthermore, with
appropriate development, the information in the maps could be translated as 3D
arrangements of the structural elements. Again, the relative placements of the elements
are key point; images representing the elements in the walkthrough are interchangeable.
Thus the current depictions of scenes in a WayMaker virtual space are independent of the
question of whether or how Lynch's formulations may be broadly useful as a basis for
design and construction tools for virtual worlds.

We expect users' experiences with WayMaker to inform our understanding of how people
think about and organize virtual space, what kinds of virtual places they would like to
"inhabit," and ways in which manifestations of Lynch's elements could become useful,
feasible additions to the repertoire of tools for graphical multiuser environments. Some of
the data should be interesting from a cognitive science perspective as well. The
interaction technique of constructing representations of an environment is based on
theories of spatial cognition focusing on knowledge creation rather than knowledge
acquisition (Gruber & Vonche, 1977; Harel & Papert, 1991; Papert, 1980; Piaget,
1951/1929, 1970/1946; Piaget & Inhelder, 1967). The "constructionist" design will
support studies of individual differences from a developmental perspective.

Researchers in spatial cognition focus on two kinds of conceptual growth: "development

of fundamental concepts of space, and the further differentiation and elaboration of these

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concepts into the development and representation of large-scale environments" (Hart &
Moore, 1973, p. 248). The developmental psychologist and genetic epistemologist Jean
Piaget was concerned with growth of fundamental concepts; the urban planner and
designer Kevin Lynch was concerned with their application and nurturance in large
spaces. Although these researchers worked at different scales and in different domains,
they shared an interest in how individuals' conceptions of space grow through
interactions with the physical environment (Piaget & Inhelder, 1967; Lynch, 1960).
WayMaker can support studies of cognitive development from both perspectives. We
hypothesize that this combination may yield results in an apparently different but deeply
related domain: Lynch's elements are essentially topological. In using them to plan the
structure of virtual places, users may deepen their understandings of this type of
mathematical relationship as well as improving spatial skills such as orientation and
navigation (Beth & Piaget, 1966; Papert, 1980; Strohecker, 1991).

Acknowledgments

Painting reproductions are from (Machotka, 1996). Work related to WayMaker is

supported by MERL - A Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratory, in Cambridge,
Massachusetts. We are grateful to MERL staff members, and to students and staff of the
Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, who experimented with the initial
prototype and provided usage data that will help guide development of subsequent
versions: Nadir Ait-Laoussine, Larry Burks, Jutiki Twan Gunter, Surapong Lertsithichai,
Pau Sola-Morales, and Mark Strehlow. Contributors to the next version include Maribeth
Back (XeroxPARC) and Daniel Gilman (Massachusetts College of Art).

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