Wayfinding systems help you guide your guests throughout the exterior and interior areas of your brand space. Furthermore, these sign systems can help ease frustration in stressful environments such as hospitals or medical offices. Wayfinding helps your guests and visitors get where they'd like to go! There are a lot of factors to keep in mind when choosing a wayfinding system for your company ' but that does not mean it has to be a difficult choice. 6 key options to consider when selecting a wayfinding system are your overall scope, goals, ADA requirements, branding, future needs and perhaps even using environmental graphics in place of traditional signage.
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How are you going to get the people from one point to another?
Defining your strategies for your wayfinding system will help you get a more narrow focus on what specific sign products to incorporate into your plan. How are you looking to connect your visitors to the brand space? Is your signage intended only to navigate or to help with traffic flow, as well? Have you considered the importance of ADA aspects for your signage? The answers to these questions can vary based on environment and organizational needs.
A large, expansive hospital campus will have different sign needs than a small dentistry with only a few hallways. A hospital campus would include a full exterior parking sign system to ensure guests can easily find appropriate parking spots, as well as effortlessly make it into the buildings to get to their appointment on time. Meanwhile, a dentistry may have a few designated parking signs and some directional help, but nothing major like a parking garage or satellite lot entails. Furthermore, a local church's sign plans would differ greatly versus a regional airport. You get the idea of how different business sizes, types and locations will impact individual wayfinding system needs.
One of the first things to decide on before getting into the details of a wayfinding system is the overall scope of the project. How big will the job be? Several key factors of your signage project to consider are: timing, materials, budget, design, branding considerations and manufacturing.
There are a variety of sign options to choose from when outfitting a building or campus. When you do discuss your wayfinding system with your manufacturer, it's important to cover both the interior and exterior aspects of the project.
From lobby directories and overhead directional signage, to room and floor numbering, interior signs insure your visitors never feel lost within your brand space. Large facilities such as hospitals, colleges, and corporate offices all reap benefits from interior signs. Whether it's making your first 8am class, an appointment or a meeting on time, an established navigation system can help ease frustration in stressful environments and get your guests where they need to go effectively. The quality of being able to easily move throughout a building interior will increase the likelihood of your visitors returning.
Entryway and directional signs can play a crucial role in creating a welcoming outdoor environment for your guests. Building numbers and names, regulatory and parking signs are all included in an exterior wayfinding package, as well. You will get them to their destination in an easy and stress-free way which will create goodwill and customer satisfaction. Parking signs are important because they get people to the right place in a timely fashion and can also extend the vision of your branding.
Will this wayfinding system need to be added on to later on? When entrusting your wayfinding system to your designer or manufacturer be sure to discuss what your future needs might be. It could save you money on what your present needs are as well as your future needs based on the project as whole .
Sign systems can be planned to be implemented all at once, or over the course of a timetable that works for your brand's goals. Oftentimes, you can save on costs when ordering a full wayfinding package in the beginning of the process. For example, you may need three hallways to be filled with room signs. However, you plan on doing this one corridor at a time. Ordering wayfinding signs for all three areas initially will typically save you budget and time later on down the road.
When creating an ADA compliant wayfinding system, there are a number of working parts to consider regarding compliance. For interior wayfinding, braille and raised letters are a few notable distinctions that enable a room sign to follow ADA standards. However, it goes further than that. Sign height, sign size, types of font and contrast of font to backer all have requirements, too.
It's also important to consider ADA requirements for exterior wayfinding. Yes, typically there may be no braille or raised letters ' but ADA encompasses more than those aspects. ADA standards help any and all with disabilities gain access to your brand's space. This means that ADA doesn't begin when you enter a building, it starts from the moment a visitor arrives on your organization's grounds.
How does this correlate with exterior signage? Well, exterior signs need to have a specific size, color, contrast and height. Furthermore, it needs to be easily legible for those who are hard of seeing. ADA legibility standards for signs include font type, size and color. Speaking of legibility, let's discuss the specifics for interior and exterior ADA signs.
Chapter 7 of the Department of Justice's ADA standards give some specific gules on legibility for signs regarding case, style, height, proportions, spacing and thickness. All characters should be uppercase. Font style should be sans serif. Additional, sign font should not be italic, oblique, script, highly decorative or any other unusual form.
As you can see, there is quite a bit to consider when making your sign fonts ADA compliant! Going over all of the additional sections in detail would take quite some time. The point I would like to get across by showing these guidelines is how in depth the details for ADA text are. If you'd like to see the entirety of the signage guidelines, you can find them here.
Want more information on Outdoor Wayfinding Signs? Feel free to contact us.
Having an expert in ADA to help you with what you do and don't need in this area is very valuable. The knowledge and insight can save you loads of time and money in the manufacturing process. The signgeek team has a thorough knowledge of user-focused design, with understandings of both the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Standards for Accessible Design. We know what's entailed in creating a space that's accessible to all including those hard of sight, hearing and physically disabled.
Wayfinding can be a great opportunity to display your brand and improve brand recognition. Connecting visitors to your brand through your space involves using logos, colors, textures necessary to put forth your brand identity. How does this look across a wayfinding system? One would say sticking to brand colors, liberally including your logo and being true to your brand vision on all your signs. However, I'll go one step further and say putting your brand into your wayfinding doesn't just stop at inserting logos. Wayfinding is a great opportunity to display your brand's personality and message in a variety of ways.
Do you have a children's section in your ICU? Perhaps you would opt for a more interesting texture or a more playful signage backer. Whereas at a law firm you would keep things clean and simple across the board.
Guiding your guests with environmental graphics is an aesthetic, cost-effective alternative to a traditional wayfinding system. Wrapping your walls with high-quality graphics can also transform a typical corporate space into an immersive, branded environment. A great example of using environmental graphics to aid in navigation would be arrows on the floor of airports or directional cues infused into the walls of museums. Using environmental graphics can help keep the flow of foot traffic going in a subtle and efficient manner. Dropping in hints of corporate culture such as quotes, history and branding cues is easy to do when guiding with environmental graphics.
Wrapping things up, you can see all the good that a thought out wayfinding package can bring for your company. Helping guests and visitors find their destination with ease will improve customer satisfaction and in turn, improve your brand image. This positive result will lead to return business and boasts a great case for new customers or members. Not only that, but making sure your facilities are up to par with ADA guidelines will improve accessibility for everyone who visits your brand space. Increasing brand awareness by infusing your signage with messaging and personality is yet another plus of a well planned wayfinding system, as well. Also, we can't forget about the option to use environmental graphics in place of traditional signage in a wayfinding system. It presents a great opportunity to guide your patrons while immersing them with your brand.
A mother of a pediatric patient once asked our hospital design team for direction and diversion: 'Get me to where I have to go, and make me forget why I'm going there.' It's a simple request, but in reality, a very tall order.
Visitors to healthcare facilities, our most complex building type, often roam, becoming lost either approaching or navigating these spaces. The traveler's intuitive faculties are typically challenged because of a combination of things, from elevated levels of anxiety to confusion resulting from a cryptic set of directions, which are often exacerbated by a once thoughtfully placed signage system that's been degraded over time with additions of irrelevant information. Hansel and Gretel thought to leave behind reflective stones to navigate their escape from a confusing forest'should patients have to do this, too?
Let's first consider why it's important for a facility (and its designers) to understand and manage a wayfinding system.
Is an effort being made to brand a facility as a patient-friendly service provider? Is money being spent on marketing specialty services? If so, how are those expectations met once someone approaches the building? Are the front doors clearly marked? Are there clear directional markers?
Upon entering, what clues are given about the quality of service being delivered? Is there immediate direction and distraction? Are guests greeted or left on their own, met only by a security guard asking for an ID? A discount store like Walmart sees value in a greeter system. Left without personal guidance, customers may not have the intended shopping experience in the comprehensive yet complex facilities.
After entry, healthcare patients and visitors traditionally head toward an elevator bank, often named by building or department. Have they been given a proper set of directions that allow for a simple cognitive map of the unfamiliar space? Can staff easily direct them to a department using fewer than four basic landmarks? Are there clear markers that are understandable and memorable? Is signage the only cue, or is there a hierarchy of memorable landmarks, describable works of art, consistently designed visitor portals, and moments of respite to reduce stress?
If long and complex travel distances can't be avoided, stage the patient journey with personal and/or digital interventions.
As health reform changes the rules for medical care reimbursement, the patient experience will become a significant driver for design-related research. Using an evidence-based methodology, design teams will require additional data to fully understand the anatomy of the entire healthcare experience. Should we consider the impact of wayfinding in influencing the patient's responses for environmental or performance evaluations? To put this question in context, Center for Health Design researcher Upali Nanda noted at a recent 'Pebble in Practice' workshop how a patient's perception of care delivery may influence the patient experience more than the actual recovery resulting from the delivery of care. Wayfinding might very well be a subtle but important first impression in the visitor's perceived experience.
I urge you to give the complete concept of wayfinding its due, not only during new building programs but in ongoing facility audits, as well. Then, the next time Hansel and Gretel show up at your front door, have security relieve them of their pebbles, informing them that the pathway out will be as simple as the pathway in and that they will be met not only by clear direction but also pleasant diversion. Then track their satisfaction scores and report in.