Hello! For the last few months my partner Sydney and I have been setting the foundation for something called Pika Maps. It’s reached the point where I feel it’s ready to put online, despite being in a very early stage of its development. Probably too early to convey a clear picture of what it will be. What’s the direction it’s going?

I’m not sure yet. But this note will walk through the goals and principles I’ve been considering and the motivation behind the tool, in order to roughly sketch out the direction I have in mind.

There are two goals for Pika Maps:

1. Build bespoke regional maps . Create interactive region-specific maps that are packed with detail and rich representations of natural features.
2. Facilitate perusing and wandering . Build on the experience of perusing a map and encountering new places to explore, with an added layer of depth only possible digitally.

These goals translate nicely into two guiding design principles…

Digital maps should be regional

One of the biggest differences between paper maps and digital maps is that digital maps almost always aim to be universal; the same content and visualization is used on a global map scale. Paper maps are naturally constrained to a specific area; the information they convey and its visualization are unique to the map.

Google Maps, Apple Maps, OpenStreetMap and the many maps built on top of it are either global or use the same categories of information and visualization as global maps. This means that what’s included in those maps is generalized to the point that it’s applicable in a global context. OpenStreetMap’s landcover types–such as “forest” and “meadow”–must be sufficiently low-resolution to apply globally.

What if we took a regional approach to creating maps? Those generalized landcover types are unlikely to be too experientially descriptive in smaller regions, especially those with high botanical diversity. For example, crossing the Sierras or Cascades from west to east reveals a gradient of species of trees and bioregions. Standing on the western slopes amongst the Incense Cedar and Red Firs feels different than wandering through the Ponderosa Pine, Juniper, and sage on the east side of the mountains. This experiential difference seems worth conveying.

Rather than try and create a map that can be replicated universally, I’d like to create bespoke maps for individual regions with the goal of conveying the feeling of being in that region. All the design elements of the map–colors, textures, text–should be chosen uniquely for each region. Regions might have different details depending on what's important to each.

Digital maps should be designed for perusing

There’s something special about poring over a paper topographic map. Mountains, lakes, and the trails that weave through valleys and over passes are all laid out to take in. Thousands of routes through the wilderness present themselves: perhaps to an intriguing lake in the high country, or to a meadow in a remote alpine valley, or to a volcanic peak.

I have yet to encounter a digital trail-oriented map that captures this experience. Most offer curated routes, ordered by popularity. I want something different, an approach that allows for exploration and discovery of places I’ve never been. Unbiased by the number of people that know about the trail.

Paper maps aren’t perfect either. They’re a snapshot in time and often don’t include sources of information that could be experientially valuable. For example: recent wildfire burns, current snow depth, forecasted temperatures, tree cover, forecasted mosquito activity and so on. Digital maps offer the opportunity to include these up-to-date sources of information and integrate them into the process of finding places to explore.

Digital maps also enable tooling that’s impossible with a physical paper map. Tools that could automatically measure trail segments to quickly get a sense of the distance and elevation from a trailhead to a lake. Tools that could create and filter trail routes based on the aforementioned sources of data. Tools that could enable three-dimensional visualizations of the environment depending on activity. With the guiding principle of designing for perusability, these tools could add to the experience by making it more interactive, dynamic, and alive.

— Christian

Any thoughts? I can be found at [email protected] 🌝