Digital Wayfinding: Identifying the lessons learned from museums, healthcare, and transit experiences

by all | 22 January 2021 11:37 am

By Leslie Wolke

In the past three years, experience designers have unveiled ground-breaking fusions of traditional and interactive wayfinding elements, animating the public realm and moulding new user experiences. Museums, healthcare facilities, and transit systems have been particularly forward-thinking, combining apps, indoor location technology, and digital and static signage to guide visitors in and around their facilities.

This white paper explores digital wayfinding experiences across the seemingly disparate environments of art museums, hospitals, and public transit to learn what makes for the most successful and seamless blend of digital and physical guidance. The tools considered are from a user’s perspective, evaluating their usefulness in navigating and deciphering the environment. The goal is to assemble lessons in user experience and system design that can be applied to tomorrow’s digital wayfinding projects. There is a lot to be learned from interacting with this generation of tools and assessing their successes and limitations. Technology evolves swiftly, only to be outpaced by one’s expectations for it. 

Project methodology

The author visited various environments and used the digital wayfinding tools at their facilities to discern what one can learn from first-hand experience. While three creators/managers of these systems agreed to be interviewed and shared some background and usage information, this is not a data-driven analysis. The essence of this report is a heuristic evaluation—the visitor’s perception of these innovative technologies and lessons learned from that on-site experience.

Diverse missions yet similar wayfinding challenges are faced

What do museums, hospitals, and transit systems have in common? Despite their distinct roles in the civic realm, they share more than a few attributes:

 

1. Large maze-like spaces

Many museums have outgrown their beaux-arts footprints and sprawl into contemporary additions, challenging primary circulation patterns. Medical centres often develop as accretions of buildings and additions, growing over time to span city blocks. Multi-modal transit centres weave subway, rail, and bus traffic through labyrinthine connections.

2. Complex programs
   
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   Innovative institutions in each of these segments have made digital wayfinding a priority, launching public-facing tools to help people find their way.

Beyond their concrete conglomeration, these facilities are built to house complicated systems: clinics require specialized equipment like magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and labs; museums need distinct spaces for exhibits and storage; and transit centres are built around platforms, turnstiles, and gates. Requirements of these stationary elements often take precedence over the design of an ideal visitor experience, resulting in more challenging journeys for their audiences.

 

3. High percentage of first-time visitors

During a recent hospital wayfinding project, researchers found 30 per cent of those surveyed were first-time visitors to the facility and an additional 40 per cent visited rarely. A study of visitors to the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh revealed 40 per cent of participants visit the museum “every few years” or less. In 2016, half of all transit rides in the U.S. were by commuters on familiar routes (routes they have traveled more than once). But the other half of rides were people navigating to a new destination and new riders, like tourists and visitors.

 

4. Purpose-driven journeys that benefit from pre-trip planning

No one visits a hospital without a specific reason, whether it is for a lab test, doctor’s appointment, or to visit a patient. While visitors may meander within a museum’s galleries, they probably planned the visit ahead of time. And public transit—as a means to get from point A to point B—requires some preliminary planning to get to the right bus stop, train station, or subway entrance to start the journey.

 

5. Google Maps does not help indoors

Google Maps has become smartphone users’ default digital wayfinding companion. Google has mapped nearly the entire planet (not to mention Mars), but it is of little help indoors or on private property. The Google Indoors initiative, to provide ‘blue-dot’ wayfinding inside airports, museums, and other large venues launched in 2014. Naturally, the program requires permission from and contracts with facility owners, but those hurdles have hampered its expansion and have prevented it from becoming a ubiquitous and reliable tool.

 

6. Institutions want users to find their way

In the very competitive healthcare market, hospitals compete on ‘patient experience,’ which is often soured by getting lost, encountering parking problems, or arriving late to appointments.  Museums are seeking novel ways to make their environments more welcoming and less intimidating—with the goal of helping visitors get the most out of their visit. Transit systems must encourage ridership to meet their revenue targets and effectively serve their communities.

 

7. Institutions are investing in digital wayfinding to better serve communities

Innovative institutions in each of these segments have made digital wayfinding a priority, launching public-facing tools to help people find their way to and around their environments.

Broadening the definition of wayfinding

Today’s technology expands upon the traditional definition of wayfinding, from finding one’s way to finding meaning along the way and context at the destination.
Urban planner Kevin Lynch defined the term ‘wayfinding’ in his seminal book Image of the City, published in 1960. To paraphrase, he characterized wayfinding as “definite sensory cues from the external environment [such as] maps, street numbers, route signs, and bus placards.”
Lynch’s original ideas about how one deciphers their surroundings resonated with architects and designers, and effectively cultivated a new discipline in the gaps between the two professions: experiential graphic design (EGD).
The first generation of EGD practitioners focused on those traditional cues of maps and signs, codifying best practices to orient and guide visitors. Over time, they widened their domain to ‘placemaking,’ making the places one visits distinct and memorable.
With the debut of the smartphone, the definition of wayfinding has once again evolved. At its core, wayfinding’s role is still to guide visitors to their destination easily and efficiently. But now, a smartphone’s sensors and apps can infuse meaning along the journey and helpful, contextual tools upon arrival.
In general, when one navigates, they look for the shortest, most efficient route—wayfinding apps address time-driven needs by routing users around traffic, highlighting the closest gas station, and directing them to the fastest transit option. It is no surprise transit apps are the most innovative and popular wayfinding apps.
However, when one meanders through a park or visits a museum, efficiencies do not drive most users—instead, they want to get the most out of their sojourn.
For example, in museums, wayfinding has become inseparable from the institution’s mission to enlighten and illuminate the collection. The term ‘playfinding’ highlights how people wander and explore environments like museums (and parks or cities), in a less directed and more serendipitous manner. Playfinding apps and interactive screens reveal the secrets of the place as one navigates: such as the history of an artifact or the biography of its maker.
In a hospital, wayfinding’s role is explicit and necessary, but subordinate to the main reason for the visit: medical care. In these facilities, wayfinding is most effectively expressed within the personal context of the visit. For example, a hospital’s app may list a patient’s appointment with ‘get directions’ or ‘closest parking options.’
These new tools—whether pre-trip planning on a home computer, smartphone app, or on-site digital signs and kiosks—inspire a new level of confidence in navigating. Users are assured they will get to their destination without getting lost. And if they do get lost, they are equipped to find their way.
Armed with these convictions—and with a smartphone in their pocket—perhaps one can find deeper meanings along the journey.

Lessons learned

What can one learn from this generation of digital wayfinding technology? There are useful insights to be gathered from both
the user’s perspective and that of the institution offering the tools.

 

User experience

1. Blend physical and digital wayfinding into one cohesive experience. The Art Institute’s JourneyMaker, a digital tool that allows a family to create their own tour of the museum, is a good example of blending the digital (designing one’s tour at the touch tables) and physical (following a paper guide to the tour stops, referring to signs along the way.) Digital tools create the custom tour and traditional tools guide the way.
It is critical all wayfinding tools share the same vocabulary and iconography to make the journey as seamless as possible.

2. Look for ways to provide context along the journey. Today’s broader definition of wayfinding demands one incorporates contextual information and features. What information could visitors use to make their experience in the environment more efficient, more rewarding, or more memorable? Something as simple as locating the nearest restroom is a practical, relevant feature most digital wayfinding tools lack today. It is also important to note visitors benefit from pre-trip planning tools that equip them with helpful information even before they leave home.

3. Lessen the cognitive load. Navigating takes attention, and the latter is in short supply in today’s chaotic world. Cluttered interfaces, stuttering blue dots, and dense maps are confusing to use. When faced with too much information, most visitors abandon the tool and ask a human to show them the way.
Most of today’s indoor blue-dot wayfinding apps ask too much of their users, resulting in unsatisfying interactions. Scale is also an issue. While the technology enjoys a ‘cool factor,’ it has not achieved real-world usability yet.

4. People are willing to try new things in low-risk situations. As Andrea Montiel De Shuman at Detroit Institute of Arts found, people are not intimidated by new technology if they are encouraged to play in congenial environments like the museum. One thrilling interaction like spying inside a sarcophagus can overcome any technical hiccups.
These are the early days of wayfinding technology, and today’s experiments will inform tomorrow’s ubiquitous tools. Just as one learned to use their car’s GPS and MapQuest in the 1990s, today, users can navigate confidently with the maps app on their phones.

5. ‘Right-size’ the technology for visitors and the environment. Digital signs deliver real-time arrival information to commuters
at stations and on buses. Mobile-optimized websites have been the lowest-friction way for some airports to offer information to their transitory visitors.

Apps are frequently the wrong answer. The sheer difficulty of promoting an app to visitors, reminding them to use it, and keeping it relevant in the over-populated app universe can rarely be overcome by its usefulness.
Usage statistics confirm the top five apps (Facebook, Facebook Messenger, YouTube, Google Search, and Google Maps) account for 80-90 per cent of total app usage.
In today’s smartphone era, touchscreen kiosks only make sense in very specific use cases. People prefer to find answers and directions on a device they carry and can refer to as they travel.

System management

1. Start with a goal to serve a specific audience—do not start with the declaration: ‘we should have an app.’ The team that created JourneyMaker began by defining a challenge to serve a specific audience. They conducted studies to see if imaginative storytelling and participatory activities could be used to connect families with fine art. They listed the needs of their audience (short, well-paced encounters with approachable artifacts) and tested each proposed interaction against that supposition until they landed on the right mix of interactive and traditional tools.

2. Experiment and iterate. American Airlines began experimenting with indoor location technologies in the 2000s, well before the commercialization of Bluetooth beacons. They have undertaken many pilot projects to test various technologies and often invite their app users to try new features.
Low fidelity experiments have yielded concrete improvements to the user interface design, from the pace of animation to the density of the map display.

3. Observe and evaluate. It may be impossible to count the number of people who notice a particular sign, but one can still analyze both the usage and usability of interactive wayfinding elements.
What destinations are people searching for on an interactive directory? What are the most-used features of an app? Where do people abandon the process of following a blue dot?
It is also important to observe people using these tools in real life. The many tools of usability research—from pre- and post-surveys to intercept interviews—provide surprising insights into the entire wayfinding experience.

4. Collaborate with experts. Many of the systems highlighted in this report are the result of collaborations among three types of specialists: experts of the place (such as museum curators or facilities managers), wayfinding professionals, and technology mavens.
Without all three disciplines at the inception of the project, the outcome can suffer. For example, without wayfinding professionals to weigh in on how to create the easiest route to follow, an app’s algorithm may direct visitors the shortest, but more confusing or even dangerous route.

5. Commit staff and funds to longer-term visions. The more successful systems are not simply the outcome of a vendor-selection process. Their design and implementation is a result of thoughtful decisions to invest in wayfinding technology and the people and operations to support it.
Above all, these tools reflect the institution’s desire to make their environments more intelligible and more convenient—an expression of the institution’s commitment to wayfinding as a core component of visitor experience.

Leslie Wolke is the founder of MapWell Studio. She consults with institutions and design firms on wayfinding technology and strategy. This article is based on a white paper Wolke, along with a five-member project advisory team, put together for the Sign Research Foundation. For more, visit www.signresearch.org[5].

Source URL: https://www.signmedia.ca/digital-wayfinding-identifying-the-lessons-learned-from-museums-healthcare-and-transit-experiences/

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