My first thoughts on Wayfinding

The idea of wayfinding seemed something simple when I decided to take this class; just some beautifully designed signs and labels and that should be it for showing someone the way and for my class assignments. However, through the very first class activity, the complexities of the subject were revealed. The game of ‘pictionary’ to create something simple that will immediately convey my name and my home country led me to a complex thinking process. Nonetheless, I came up with a flag, an emoji, and a sine curve which I thought someone would easily read as ‘Hasin is from Pakistan’. Quite clearly, it was not to be the case. A straightforward inspection of the drawing showed the massive knowledge assumption on the end of the user and a use of images that might not be specific enough.

However, before diving into the understanding of the design elements I gained, the entire process of wayfinding and design around this theme in itself is very dynamic, comprehensive, and impactful. It all just starts of from an idea, or a bunch of different ideas, that find modifications and adjustments (even slight ones) through a process of discussions and evaluation of the context. Passing through these rigorous tests of what design suits the context, it will eventually be translated into something that will not only convey the idea and a meaning but will create a massive impact. This impact ranges from an ease in navigation and wayshowing, but also in creating an identity for the place the design is produced for. So the impact eventually associates the design to the place’s visual identity to anyone who comes across the design.

Intricacies of Wayfinding Design

Thus far, we were introduced to these two important concepts of design and the impact of the design in building an eventual understanding of wayfinding. Let’s inspect the element of design now. When faced with the task of designing, a wide array of questions immediately pop up. Questions like ‘What to design?’, ‘How to design?’, ‘What to convey from the design itself?’ among many others can have complicated answers derived from a series of exploratory analysis of the context and intended purpose of the design. However, at the center of every good design for wayfinding is the core idea of user-centered design. The design should cater to the user and take into account the idea of what the user might be looking for. This demands a no-knowledge or a minimal-knowledge assumption on the part of the user yet still designing something that is clearly able to guide the user in a way that seems natural. So instead of asking the user to go to the east to get to the ‘East dining hall’ when they are at the ‘West dining hall’, it might be more effective and intuitive to just demonstrate something that says ‘go to the other side of the campus’. This design can then account for intricacies of different design elements and concepts, while keeping the overall concept simple and easy to understand. Here, a wayfinding designer may leverage associations of the place translated into the design (e.g. palms to show the central plaza of NYUAD) yet using something as simple as grey rectangles to depict buildings. Another design element for wayfinding design is typography, where it possesses the power to essentially set the tone of what is being conveyed. The typographic design, in addition to being clear and vivid in wayfinding, also needs to account for the identity it can give to a place. Therefore, the process of wayfinding design becomes a rather complicated one that aims to create something simple, intuitive, and natural by taking into account all these complexities of design.

Wayfinding Design and Identity

This brings us to our second point about a place’s visual identity being derived from wayfinding design. Wayfinding design incorporates a variety of different elements to leverage the power of design in achieving its goals. This can lead to modifying an existing or creating a new visual identity for the place or context. From different colors and the meaning they convey, to the use of specific typefaces and creating logos – everything starts to give a meaning to the place and, soon, an association of its identity with that place. For an NYUAD student, it is the association of Faiza the falcon to athletics department’s offices, events, and facilities. For a tourist it may be the natural thought of New York City after coming across the Helvetica font. The point is, wayfinding design leads to identities being created or modified and, thus, the entire exercise of wayfinding design becomes a critical one for the designer who has to take into account the impact a design will create in addition to achieving its other goals.

Wayfinding – what does it mean?

So my understanding of wayfinding shifted from something that would be fairly straightforward to a practice that has underlying complexities, and something that demands thought and understanding of the varying contexts and users to eventually translate into something that not only achieves its goals but goes on to create impact in the form of identities and much more. However, what about the concept of ‘Wayfinding’ itself? What does that even mean? And what does it signify? Let’s explore.

Discussions around wayfinding design revealed so many different ideas about the intuitiveness of wayfinding design, and how it should feel natural, and how it should be centered around the user. The reason, it turns out, is that wayfinding is built upon how we practice wayshowing. So why is it that a very beautiful looking building may still be poor in wayfinding design because it failed to incorporate a wayfinding designer in its initial planning and development? Here a quote from Clement Mok, former creative director of Apple Inc., helps set things into context:

“If you look at studies in wayfinding, everything from exhibit designs to building the cathedrals, it’s about creating a complete system. It’s about looking at the whole”.

Thus, at its core, wayfinding design is something that is not necessarily separate from the overall design but is something that should be integrated within the entire design process to complete a whole system that just feels natural. The entire system should be built around guiding, showing, and assisting a user in wayfinding. We practice wayfinding in unknown places to find our way; a good wayfinding design takes that into account and is “…built on how we practice wayfinding” (W>W). Thus, instead of throwing in a bunch of labels and signs to often make up for a poor wayfinding design, the design itself should scream what it is all about. That is where integration of wayfinding in the entire design process comes in: to create a whole system. In essence, incorporation of wayfinding into the entire design process makes the process intuitive, helps to make the directions clear, and eliminates ambiguities. NYUAD campus might as well be considered a prime example of a system full of ambiguities in wayshowing since it seems to lack a good integration of essential wayfinding principles. Such poor designs then lead to not only ambiguities but also accessibility issues. It then becomes more about just checking the boxes for compliance rather than making a genuine effort to guide someone to some place.

Wayfinding then becomes about orienting people in unknown spaces and making the process natural. Wayfinding enables the entire system to become part of the process. Wayfinding design undertakes the responsibility of accounting for so many complexities of a good wayfinding design including those discussed above. Thus, wayfinding becomes a complicated system that is integrated in good designs to keep them simple. 

As Kevin Lynch, American urban planner and author of ‘The Image of the City’ where he coined the term ‘wayfinding’, says:

“The terror of being lost comes from the necessity that a mobile organism be oriented in its surroundings”.

Wayfinding is what helps eliminate this terror from the mobile organism.