Mind The Gap: The ‘Tube Map’ as London’s User Interface

An essential, but often ignored, technology that stands as the interface between the city and its public is the map. But how can a visual representation influence a user’s points of contact within, mental organization of and access to urban space? In this paper I present results from an ethnographic study demonstrating how a familiar subway map – the ‘Tube Map’ – structures the ways in which users of London conceptually organize, understand, and interact with the city. The project suggests fruitful crossover areas between both theory and practice in HCI, Urban Planning and Science & Technology Studies by approaching the individual as a ‘user’ of a city, applying the technique of cognitive mapping to overlapping virtual and analog spaces, and exploring the social and practical effects of strong and standardized graphical user interfaces. Author