(Here are some prototypes I made that might help.)
I love Formula 1, but the broadcast can be disorienting (and therefore boring) for newcomers. If you don’t know better, it just looks like cars driving around corners. The most interesting competitive dynamics are invisible.
To F1’s credit, they do have some data visualizations. Some of the new ones they introduced last year (like the ghost car) are amazing. But there’s still so much opportunity here for improvement and experimentation.
Over the years I’ve been collecting little ideas and have finally gotten around to prototyping them.
Here’s what I got.
Sense of Place
The first thing that bugged me when I started watching F1 was the feeling that I had no idea where the cars actually were on track. The commentators refer to turns by name and/or number, but unless you’ve been watching F1 for years, you probably have no idea what you’re looking at.
I would fix this by simply showing a little camera indicator on the track map, like this:
The F1 broadcast could show this as a mini-map in the bottom right corner, like this:
And then as the camera swivels left to follow the cars up through Eau Rouge (the name of the turn where this camera happens to be placed), you’d see the angle update in the mini-map in real time:
Speaking of “Eau Rouge,” I only know it’s called that because I’ve been watching F1 for several years now. If you’re new you probably have no idea which turn you’re looking at on the broadcast.
I’d fix that by occasionally putting in a graphic that just tells you the turn numbers and names, like this:
These are just two small things, but I think they’d go a long way towards helping viewers feel oriented, and like they can learn the tracks faster and understand what the commentators are talking about.
Sense of Pace
Related threads