Navigating public spaces, especially unfamiliar ones, can be a challenging experience for many. Busy airports, sprawling university campuses or large healthcare facilities can be intimidating to navigate, and the ability to find your way in these public spaces is crucial. Finding your way in a healthcare facility when you are rushing someone down for an emergency is very important – finding the right space in time will allow faster relief. Similarly, one can waste so much time aimlessly walking around huge corporate parks if they are unable to find what they need. This is where effective signage comes into play and acts as a tool for wayfinding and enhancing the user experience by reinforcing brand identity and ensuring accessibility for everyone.
Understanding Wayfinding Signage Systems
Wayfinding signage is a system of signs that guides people through large spaces and enhances their understanding and experience of the space along the way. These signs create safe, inclusive, and enjoyable experiences for people by helping them navigate efficiently and instinctively guide them to find what they are looking for. These simple but effective signs make navigation easy, enhance efficiency, and reduce confusion in complex spaces.
Some examples of these signs could be – – Signs showing floor numbers in buildings or parking garages. – Entrance or exit signs – Left, right, or U-turn direction signs – Signs like “Baggage Claim →” on busy airports or “Platform 1 ↑” at railway stations – Room or department wayfinding signs such as “Pathology →,” “Restrooms ←,” or “Room 105-111 →.”
Delivering High-impact User Experiences
Effective wayfinding is far deeper than just placing signs around a space. It’s an approach that uses strategy and principles of UX to transform a physical environment into an intuitive space. A successful signage system would help people reach their destinations smoothly while fostering a positive experience.
A well-defined wayfinding signage system does far more than guide visitors, it immerses users in the brand’s world. The result? A smooth journey. People who can find their way smoothly see lower levels of frustration. A thoughtfully designed signage system will also see more efficiency with less crowding and a smoother flow of people. Given that wayfinding signage also promotes safety. High-impact signage systems should also be accessible and must consider people with disabilities and multi-lingual options.
For seamless wayfinding, we usually suggest a combination of sign types which come together to create a system that enables navigation and a better user experience. Our approach is to build custom solutions based on the needs of our clients, and we explore a combination of modular signs such as lightboxes, exit signs and so on. Modular signs are interchangeable and allow for a lot of flexibility and ease of maintenance, this is why we use our modular signs extensively for wayfinding solutions. Entry and Exit signs as well as cautionary signs with universally recognisable symbols are deployed for wayfinding in sensitive areas. We also have our newly launched lightbox which is great for spotting from a distance.
Wayfinding signage is something that all people, knowingly or unknowingly, interact with every single day. From finding your way around a healthcare facility to locating your favourite department store, wayfinding signage helps to instinctively guide you through places with ease so that you can find what you’re looking for. In fact, 70% of visitors rely on signage to navigate their way through public transit hubs alone. For spaces like healthcare facilities, having good wayfinding signage can help save precious time in case of an emergency. This is why emergency wards in hospitals are usually stationed in the most easily accessible part of the hospital so that there is no time wasted in locating it. Similarly, large corporate parks can be overwhelming to navigate without the right directions. Not being able to find your meeting room will leave you frustrated; this is why the right signage will elevate the user experience when executed correctly.
If you’re a business owner looking to build memorable, functional and customisable signage systems for wayfinding, reach out to us and we’d be happy to help.
