Cimex only digital agency at Crime Mapping Conference

Cimex presenting at the 7th annual Crime Mapping Conference this year - the only digital agency to present.

Cimex presented at the 7th annual Crime Mapping Conference this year – which was exciting for us, because we were the only digital agency to present there.

So what were we doing there?

Crime mapping, which has been around for some time now, is the science of analysing crime from a location based perspective to better understand crime patterns, solve crime and plan deployment of crime prevention resources.

As you might expect, crime mapping actually started out using a printed map, coloured pin pricks, bits of string and paper labels. But in recent years, more of the process has moved more into the digital domain and involves advanced data display techniques – such as heat maps to show intensity of crime and statistical data processing.

Crime mapping has traditionally been internally focussed and mainly used by police and local authorities. But more recently there has been a bigger drive to make crime data more available in the public domain.

It’s the public presentation of crime data that’s of real interest to Cimex, from both a user experience and technical perspective.

The three questions that immediately come to mind in this context are:

• What do the public want from crime data?
• How do they interact?
• How can new interactive technologies and mapping solutions be deployed to deliver effective solutions, for the public and as a means of two way communication, allowing the public to interact and provide feedback through web 2.0 community based features?

While a few police forces in the UK have been pioneers, a recent push from government declared that all police forces should publish crime maps of their crime data. This has resulted in a fairly mixed bag of different approaches.

Its early days yet, but up until now, the most common interaction with crime data would have been through sites such as Upmystreet. This will be an ongoing process as both public and publishers develop a better understanding of what solutions will work best.

A new approach to crime mapping was presented at the Crime Mapping Conference by Cassian Harrison (BBC), Alice Perman (Mentorn TV) and Spencer Chainey (Jil Dando Institute of Crime Science) in the key note address.

Together with Mentorn, the BBC are currently working on a new series in which they are tracing ‘real crime’ as it happens. The programme looks at everyday instances like drunkenness, public disorder or domestic violence rather than only at the highly violent crimes portrayed in other crime series. Another new element in this series is that it truly merges TV and internet through an online crime map developed by Cimex.

Prior to creating this map, Cimex conducted user testing research in exactly this area to study the effectiveness and usability of crime statistics online. These findings were presented at the conference and highlight the following issues:

Across the different websites the findings show that users need points of reference like e.g. time period and crime type.

When looking at the different ways of visualising statistical data online, tables provide the quickest and easiest data access.

In contrast to this, graphs were immediately connected to statistics and can be more useful for in-depth information. That said, this approach may cause users to take too long in extracting the relevant information.

Maps were found to serve three purposes in this study: for area selection (purely functional), for getting an overview and for comparing areas/crime rates.

To make crime maps user friendly and accessible, Cimex recommends the following 6 steps:

1. Carefully consider which data to display in which form, some data are better provided in e.g. tables
2. Colour-code maps in a meaningful way (i.e. the darker the colour, the higher the crime rate)
3. Connect maps & other data to allow users to verify the data and build trust in the source
4. Provide points of reference users are familiar with to further understanding of statistics
5. Interactivity enhances user experience but has to allow filtering information according to user needs
6. Conduct user research to find out about problems and barriers prior to publishing statistical data or maps online

Find out more about Cimex and user experience.

Download a copy of our Crime Mapping Conference presentation

Published: 15 Jun 2009

Tags: Customer insight