Credits
This exercise is based on Rasagy's Schematic Map exercise. You can watch his Outlier 2022 talk Scheming Against Accurate Maps on Youtube and check out Map School on GitHub.
Step 1 - Where, who, why?
Think of a map that you would like to make. You can make a map of your hometown, the locality you grew up in, the city you live in now, or something else. Try adding one more angle to this map - is it a map of quiet places in Delhi? What to see in Hyderabad if you're only there for a day?
Step 2 - Mental Model
Without looking at an actual map, start sketching on pen and paper out what you remember about the area. You can mark out places of interest, roads, even memories that are unique to you.
Step 3 - Curate
Now look at the same space on a map of your choice. You may find more things you forgot about, and you'll have a more accurate real world representation of places and distances. You can take a screenshot and start redrawing your sketch to account for these.
Step 4 - Abstract
Try and find a visual metaphor that works for this map. Is there a shape that is forming that you could smoothen to make it more geometric? Are there clear associations for some other shape that you can make with this area? If you can't find anything else, try and fit things to a square, hexagonal, or other grid.
Submission Format
Take a photo of your sketch (get it as clean as possible) and also save each subsequent version of the map you make. Submit these in a Google Doc with captions to describe what you changed at each step.