The Best Western Plus Lamplighter Inn and Conference Centre in London, Ont., has installed digital wayfinding signs at three key entrances.
Best Western gets better
The Best Western Plus Lamplighter Inn and Conference Centre in London, Ont., realized the need for an effective wayfinding design for its 15 meeting rooms, which are capable of accommodating groups of eight to 800 people, across more than 1,858 m2 (20,000 sf) of indoor space. Its objective was to implement a flexible, visually driven event scheduling system that would tie in with wayfinding signage to help visitors easily find their way around the property and to the right meetings.
The facility installed 1.2-m (46-in.) digital signage ‘reader boards’ at three key entrances, driven by media players to display event schedules, hotel information and wayfinding messaging. A custom layout was designed that interfaced with a secure Google Calendar.
This way, as the Lamplighter employees were already familiar with Google Calendar, it did not take much time for them to learn how to prepare event schedules in advance and make content updates as needed. And it was convenient to be able to do so from anywhere with Internet access, rather than being tied to any particular computer.
And once set, the digital signage runs on ‘autopilot,’ providing easy-to-read schedules and relevant ‘breakout’ content to guide visitors to their various meeting rooms. After they expire, both the event listings and their breakout content are removed from the reader boards, making room for additional information. And if all loaded events expire, the screens simply focus on the Lamplighter’s basic wayfinding information and messages that do not change.
The system also takes advantage of the brain’s preference for images over text, as alluded to earlier, by automatically displaying unique shapes and colours for each event and to indicate their respective locations on a map. Also, any of the default marker pairs can be temporarily replaced with the logo of the company hosting the event, at the hotel’s choosing, and then when that event expires, the logo will automatically be replaced by the default marker pair again.
Associating visual markers with meeting rooms makes it much quicker and easier for visitors to find their locations in listings and on maps. The graphics are especially useful when they are repeated on screens en route to and near the meeting room in question.
“The project looks better than I imagined,” says one Lamplighter manager. “It provides our guests with a unique and informative experience.”
With digital signage, time-sensitive wayfinding information, such as event listings, can be managed remotely.
Digital advantages
These aspects of the Lamplighter’s wayfinding system point to the advantages of digital over static signage. The ability to add and change graphics can help communicate themes to visitors, particularly when the artwork is easily recognizable. Without such features, they may not have enough information to decide their course of action.
Good wayfinding creates a good experience by giving visitors a strong indication of where they are and how to get to where they need to be. Bad wayfinding, on the other hand, creates a bad experience not only for visitors, but also for the facility, as employees will end up being pulled away from their regular tasks to assist lost visitors, reducing staff productivity. Further, if visitors become so frustrated with the environment that they leave and vow never to return again, then the ineffective wayfinding system is clearly bad for business.
