Source: bake-off #1 Form A (Team Landing — Lens Bake-off) — c100 tile-map thread, 2026-09-30 · plan cycles/c100.landing-pages/tilemap-variations-plan.md
One form, pushed three ways. Ink — does it hold in greyscale, and what does colour add when we choose it on purpose? Size — from the landing hero down to a DataMachine, where the question becomes what does a tile map say when it can't say names?Spin — layouts, fills, nesting, and eight lenses as small multiples. Every map is one component (LandingTileMap) on bake-off #1's fixture world; hover any tile and the same team lights up in every map on the page.
Ink
Grey
Status colour
Steps
Morph
Lens
Period
Scale
State
Where are policies being broken, and how long has it been? · Payments and ML Research hold 45% of open violations
§1
Ink — greyscale, and colour on purpose
The same map four ways. Greyscale strips the colour job away to test whether area and value carry the form alone; critical tiles keep a corner notch so status survives without hue. The picker above sets the hue for 3 and 4 — and for every other map on the page. Try Steps → 5: stepped greys compare better than a smooth ramp.
1Grey
content ink only · critical = corner notch
2Grey + status
colour only where it means something — warning, error, gap
3Chosen hue — Grape (pick one above)
the picker carries every job
4Chosen hue + status
hue for magnitude, status ink for risk
noneelevatedcriticalarea = people · ink = grey · status on · smooth
§2
Size ladder — hero to glyph
Six sizes, each labelled the way its pixels allow. Watch the job change: at XL you read teams; by the DataMachine you read a shape — how lumpy the whole is, where the heat sits — and the names move into the text around it.
XL100% × 380— landing hero — name · value · sub where they fit
L560 × 260— half page — name · value
M360 × 180— card — names truncate, small tiles go silent
S200 × 88— DataMachine #right — silent; provenance carries the story
Violations
by team · area = people
11
Payments and ML Research hold 45% of open violations
XS120 × 36— table cell — the row's own text carries it
DepartmentTeam fabricViolations
Engineering · 3 teams5
Product · 3 teams3
Go-to-market · 3 teams2
Operations · 3 teams1
Glyph48 × 16— inside a sentence — the sentence is the label
Violations this period — Payments and ML Research hold 45% of open violations.
§3
Labelling at DataMachine size
200 px can't hold forty names — or twelve. Six ways to put the names somewhere else: in a sentence, a key, a gutter, a narrower story, a coarser map, or a partner list. Each is a real DataMachine with the lens headline as its value.
1Silent + note
Strong honest and calm; the sentence is precise where the map is not · Weak the map can't be read on its own — it is decoration unless the sentence agrees
Violations
by team
11
Payments and ML Research hold 45% of open violations
2Numbered key
Strong every named tile findable; ties map to list · Weak two places to look; numbers only fit the bigger tiles
Violations
by team
11
1 Payments 32 ML Research 23 Sales Eng 24 Platform 25 Mobile 1
numbers = story rank · highest first
3Callouts
Strong names on the image, no key; reads like an annotated chart · Weak leaders cross other tiles; three is the ceiling at 88 px
Violations
by team
11
Payments and ML Research hold 45% of open violations
4Highlight
Strong the map says "here, and here" — the sentence becomes a picture · Weak hides the rest; a pick of story, not a view of the whole
Violations
by team
11
Payments and ML Research hold 45% of open violations
5Other bucket
Strong labels fit because there are fewer tiles · Weak the fold can hide the hot spot — watch Violations at 1,500
Violations
by team
11
five largest teams named · the rest folded
6Paired list
Strong the map gives the shape, the list gives the names; linked, they teach each other · Weak twice the width; the map is almost a legend
Violations
by team
11
Payments3
ML Research2
Sales Eng2
Platform2
hover a row or a tile — the other follows
§4
Other variations — for a spin
4aLayout
Squarified has the best aspect ratios but no order. Ordered strips read worst-first, top-left to bottom-right. Equal tiles give up area so every name fits. The one-row bar is the 1-D degenerate — a segment bar, and the natural form below DataMachine height.
Squarified— best aspect ratios, biggest first
Ordered strips— worst-first, reading order
Equal tiles— every team the same size — names always fit
One-row bar— the 1-D degenerate (a segment bar), worst-first
4bSize by — people, or the lens itself
Area = the lens makes the hot spots physically big: area = tokens, area = open violations, area = idle spend. Teams at zero vanish — the quiet are invisible, which is either the point or the flaw.
Area = people— layout never moves when the lens or period changes
Area = open violations (weighted)— fill keeps the lens; area repeats it
4cFill style
Level is a water line — natural for share and gap lenses, and it reads in grey because height is a position, not a shade. Dot puts the value inside a neutral tile, which frees the tile's own fill for a second quantity later.
Solid
Level (water line)
Dot (area ∝ value)
4dNested people — the tile map and the swarm in one
Each team tile is filled with its people, one cell each, coloured by the lens's person mark (bake-off #1's hot · warm · on · off · ghost). Flip Scale → 1,500: the cells become a texture, and the texture is still honest.
…and at DataMachine size
Violations
by team · a cell per person
11
Payments and ML Research hold 45% of open violations
hotwarmonoffghost (outline) · not an AI user / not in cohort
4eLens small multiples — the team fabric
All eight lenses at DataMachine size, one layout. Because area = people, every map is the same shape; only the ink moves, so your eye compares positions across lenses. Label once, in the key map; hover anywhere to find a team in all nine.
Key map— names only, no lens
AI usage2.6B
Platform and ML Research carry 47% of ai usage
Spend$16.2k
Platform and ML Research carry 47% of spend
Active68%
Lowest in Legal (0%) and Finance (25%)
Violations11
Payments and ML Research hold 45% of open violations
Coverage92%
Data Eng 65% · Sales Eng 67% — 5 of 12 teams have unseen devices
Harness48%
Highest in Web (78%) and Platform (66%)
Waste$1.4k
Web and Payments carry 50% of idle spend
Retention75%
Lowest in Legal (0%) and Sales Eng (38%)
4fMorph
Turn Morph on in the controls, then flip Scale, State, or Layout-affecting knobs. Area = people means lens and period changes only recolour — the layout is stable, a property worth keeping. Tiles only move when the world changes shape (scale, state, size-by-lens).
Judge
What to try, and what to look for
Where does grey stop working?
Set Ink → Grey, Status → Off and walk the lenses. Volume and share should hold; Violations loses critical-vs-elevated to a notch. Is the notch enough, or is status the one colour job we never give up?
Pick a hue you'd ship
Try the swatches and the picker with Steps → 5. Which hue reads as "magnitude" without reading as "alarm" — and does grape collide with the rest of qdash's primary-coloured chrome?
The smallest tile map
Walk §2 top to bottom. At which size does it stop being a map of teams and become a shape? Is the 48 px glyph in the sentence a picture or a decoration?
Which label strategy ships in a DataMachine?
Silent + note is the cheapest and most honest; paired list is the most useful and the widest. Flip Scale → 1,500 — which strategies survive 40 teams?
Size by the lens
On Violations, area = open violations makes Payments huge and the calm teams vanish. Is "the quiet are invisible" the point for a security reader, or a flaw?
The team fabric
The eight small multiples are one layout, eight inks. Could this be the Home row for "teams" — and would you read it, or just look at it?
Parked (not built — see the plan): two-level org → team hierarchy (the fixture has no org level), delta fill vs the previous period (no prior period yet), a fixed-home cartogram where each team keeps its place across time, and Voronoi / circle packing (different families, not variations).