Author: Muhammad hasin Shabbir

As a semester full of learning in this class comes to an end, I look back in retrospect upon the meaning of Wayfinding and how my understanding of it has evolved. In my first blog, I wrote about my first thoughts on Wayfinding and described it as “a practice that has underlying complexities” and is “…about orienting people in unknown spaces and making the process natural”. However, if I now question myself, I was really unsure of what those complexities consist of when I was writing that blog. The class discussions and activities then introduced me to these practices, ideas, and principles that I then referred to as ‘complexities’. From the theoretical ideas of Wayfinding methods, affordances, and nudges to actually implementing those in my designs, I started experiencing what a wayfinding designer really does. So the class became much more than a class about graphic designing, it became an experience where ideas are given a frame of a wide variety of theoretical considerations, judged from a critical lens, and then shaped into reality. Whether it be going through different iterations of maps and diagrams with Jug Cerović or brainstorming so many impossible ideas for a pictogram on the whiteboard, what I learnt through the lectures found its place in reality through an integration of all the theoretical concepts. However, there was much more to it. A significantly important and sizeable portion of my learning experience about wayfinding and design came not just from theory and practice, but from my interactions with my peers.

Everyone in the class brought a unique perspective and set of skills to contribute towards the topic. The very first activity of our names in pictionary revealed how AbdelRahman is really skilled at quickly thinking of effective designs and then creating them using the graphic design tools. For most of us it was a new skill to learn, and so we had a different learning curve. However, seeing so many designs come up so quickly from AbdelRahman helped me understand the design process better, and helped me visualize what good designs could really look like. This undoubtedly helped me learn the Adobe suite quicker. Working and brainstorming ideas with Zunair, Ishmal, and Muskaan helped me give coherence to my thoughts while working on pictograms. Zunair brought a critical eye towards the practicality of an idea in wayfinding systems while Ishmal and Muskaan helped me make the pictograms wildly impossible. Laura’s critical questioning of whatever we discussed in class with the Professor or one of the guest speakers helped me ask questions that gave me a better perspective of wayfinding systems and ideas. Ulan’s openness to collaborate and Yeji’s cheatsheet’s design gave me ideas out of my own box of creativity while Jia’s design work based on the many theoretical ideas and her analysis of existing systems in her blog inspired further refinement in my own ideas. It would be unfair and impossible to try and summarize everyone’s contributions to my learning experience throughout the semester in just one blog. However, one thing is certain: every time anyone offered any opinion, it added another angle to my own perception about the different topics we came across. Without that, I would have had a very narrow understanding of wayfinding design no matter how many texts I read or how many designs I made. Through integrating all the different ideas coming from my peers, I have come a long way in learning about wayfinding. As I quoted Clement Mok, former creative director of Apple Inc., in my first blog:

““If you look at studies in wayfinding,…,it’s about creating a complete system. It’s about looking at the whole”.

What do I mean when I say “I have come a long way in learning about wayfinding”? Here, I do not just refer to what I learnt inside of the class. Before enrolling in the course, I came across reviews saying you will actually find yourself seeing design differently everywhere. The first campus activity of noting the wayfinding design issues was just an introduction. Soon, I had learnt so much about wayfinding systems that I started viewing everything with this critical angle I had just gained. This became to the point that some designs even became annoying and inconvenient when I could understand how little or no attention has been paid to wayfinding elements in these systems. Be it a walk on the campus highline, navigating myself in World Trade Center Mall Abu Dhabi, finding my way in Expo 2020 Dubai, or walking through the streets of Tbilisi during Spring Break. While I could see how ideas like simplicity and redundancy of design and integration of wayfinding principles could make these existing designs so much more helpful, I also found myself being able to easily find my way by employing some of the wayfinding ideas that we came across in class. Being less reliant on what Google Maps told me and employing track following, educated seeking, among other ideas worked for me almost all the time and I could actually enjoy seeing the world around me instead of staring down a path on my phone screen.

This critical analysis of existing systems makes me wonder about how much thought should be given to improve poor designs? And when does a wayfinding design fail? On a walk back to my room from class, I noticed something that immediately made me think that all the wayfinding design on our beautiful little campus has failed miserably. The disoriented maps, the conflicting directional signage, the unorganized braille, and the hidden components have no meaning at all and are really just there to check boxes when people cannot even use them. The following pictures I took will show you what I am talking about:

These paper signs were pasted across the campus pointing to buildings like A1A and D2. I even saw one saying “D2” pasted on a wall of D2 itself. Upon further inspection, they seemed to be pasted to help some visitors for an event to navigate on campus. Still, even with these paper signs, a visitor asked me the directions to A1A from palms at 4 a.m. While these speaks volumes about how the existing wayfinding systems have failed, it also invites and creates a space to think about what can be done moving forward. Surely, printing on A4 sized papers for every building every time there is a potential visitor unfamiliar to our campus spaces is not a very impressive solution, let alone effective or sustainable. From what we identified in this class, and this seemingly final nail on the coffin, the NYUAD campus is in critical need of a significant update to its wayfinding systems that are designed not just to check boxes but to actually help the users of these systems find their way.

From the number of buildings in this campus, the ambiguity surrounding their names, the ever moving offices, the dynamically shifting spaces, and the growing number of centers on campus, it can only be safe to assume that the problems are projected to increase. This is an example of a small campus where poor wayfinding design leads to problems. Now think of a larger system, perhaps cities like Abu Dhabi or projects like Etihad rail that are directly connected to millions of people and not just a few hundred on a university campus. The problems related to wayfinding could grow exponentially and, thus, it is imperative to have systems built around good wayfinding ideas at their core.

While our class is now attempting to provide some useful wayfinding recommendations to some centers on campus, it is going to take institutional effort for a major improvement. Nonetheless, the concepts I learnt in class from the lectures, from practice, and from my peers were vital in helping me think more critically about wayfinding. With an ever present need of good wayfinding design, it might be a wrap for our class this semester but now it’s never going to be a wrap for my learning experience around wayfinding.

Design involves creativity; the entire process of building systems based on designs is based on some level of creative process and this process requires thinking. In this blog, I talk about this abstract concept and try to understand what informs our creative thinking process. One way, and a very simple way, might be to ‘just get done with it’ or to Google it though, as made clear from our class interactions, this practice is generally not healthy for creativity and is very frowned upon and rightly so. After all, Google tends to demonstrate that my creativity is the same as millions of other people searching for some idea and as a good designer I should refuse to accept that. Instead, I should meet Google’s suggestions with a rebuttal and instead dig deeper into my own creative horizons. The question is, what does that process look like? And I titled this blog as ‘a guide’ because the way I try to answer these questions form a flow that might help inform the creative thinking process of my fellow designers.

When talking about designing something, the very least that a designer has to do is to come up with ideas. It is these very ideas that will translate into something that gives meaning to a design. For coming up with these ideas, a designer then has to think of different questions and try to find answers to these questions in order to connect the dots and come up with the one (or many) idea(/s) that will work. This seems to be very complicated so let’s pause for a moment. Before I come to what these questions may be, how about the situation when a designer experiences a thinker’s block and cannot even think of anything, let alone come up with ideas? What if you as a designer are just sitting there staring at the screen hoping for an idea to pop up into your mind but to no avail? Here, you might want to take some help from a friend (who some argue could be a designer’s best friend). Here, a designer picks up their pencil and paper – or whatever equivalent there might be – and starts making their brain vomit onto the paper. Scribbling, scratching, drawing lines, iterating, making the paper full of randomness, but at least visualizing the different things (ideas) floating around in your mind. Though this process might look a bit different for some, with scribbling being replaced by note-taking, the purpose of this exercise is to help the designer make sense of whatever is in their brain, connect the dots, understand the task at hand through visualizing their own thoughts, and then develop a frame within which they want to work. Soon, the designer can find themselves moving forwards in the path of creative process, from just staring and thinking to having something to work on.

The next step would be to introspect these ideas and designs. Surely, not everything would really work for a particular purpose (you can’t just draw a circle when the task demands a square unless you redefine what a square is). So the designer now looks at their ideas through the lens of what the eventual goal is and asks questions like “what do I want to achieve with my design/s?”. The idea behind this exercise is to make the ideas aligned with the use. Thus, naturally, this step would require adjustments, alterations, discarding some ideas, and even coming up with some new ones. Only the ideas that are aligned with the use and will fulfill the goal should be worked upon, rest are irrelevant right now.

Talking about aligning with purpose also touches upon the idea of context. Coming up with a good design is not a very simple process and a good designer must first understand these different nuances of the process to achieve a good design. A good design doesn’t just fulfill some purpose, it usually also tells a story. Narration of this story attaches meaning and significance to the design and it becomes essential for the good designer to think about their design within this context. Rewinding to the talk with Cristian Greco, the director of Museo Egizio, would it be sufficient for the museum design to just lay out the acquired artifacts accompanied by textual information? Does that ‘fulfill the purpose’? Not really because that design would just fulfill the purpose of displaying the artifacts without providing much meaning. Instead, the museum chose to display, design, and lay out the artifacts in a manner that narrates the story of the Egyptian culture from the time the artifacts are from. This is a very precise example of providing context to design so that the user of the design can connect to the story that needs to be told in a very subtle way. So the creative thinking process has to be bounded by and informed by the context within which the designer’s creativity is working.

Is that it? We think, we come up with design, we fulfill the purpose and stay within a context and get our job done as designers? Fortunately for some, and unfortunately for others, a good design demands more. Design has the power to create impact, give identities, and shape the experience of the people within the environment the design is placed. Thus, it becomes a need for a good design to be bounded and limited by ethical considerations. By ethical considerations I do not just mean maintaining integrity and honesty by not copying someone else’s work and presenting it as your own in whatever way, though that is also one of the very important aspects of design and also why Google is bad (it can attach your bias to someone else’s work so much that you can end up creating whatever someone has already done). Here, the ethical considerations take a broader approach and integrate the context within them. Is it okay for a museum to place an artifact from one culture within so many artifacts for another? Is it okay for a design to not be very friendly to people with accessibility needs? Is the design even okay within the society or culture it will be placed? What might be okay in one place might be totally unacceptable in another. But would the adjustments demanded by these ethical considerations mean that my design could potentially fail? Is my design problematic for some context and is it conforming to these problematic ideas that have persisted for so long? Should I use the icon of blood in red color to design something or would it be too triggering? How brutal can my design be and still be okay? This, and many more questions depending on the context need to be answered before deciding on what a good design may be. Otherwise, the creative process collapses when it fails to take into account such ethical considerations because it fails to understand the context. Now, it may be that you are asking ‘how many questions is too many questions and when to stop asking these questions?’ That is an exercise I leave for the reader, try it and maybe stop at whenever you think you have tried enough. Through an iterative process involving feedback, a designer gets better at this.

Another important aspect is to put yourself in the user’s shoes. Well, at least try to because there are just so many users. This helps you understand if your creative thinking process is based on too much assumption. It is natural for someone to make assumptions when thinking of something that will have a wider use. But a creative process that does not think about what these assumptions are and does not challenge them could be bad for the design. Simply making a pictogram where a person gets wings after drinking an energy drink to fulfill the task of visualizing ‘how to give wings to a person’ is bad because it is based on an assumption that everyone who looks at this pictogram will know the Redbull slogan “Redbull gives you wiiings”. So looking at your design and understanding any assumptions made is critical. Is the assumption a really big one? How much of an impact would it make in the design’s success or failure? What could help is keeping things simple in your creative thinking process while designing so that you avoid basing your design on many assumptions as a designer.

Design is based on creative thinking and good creative thinking leading up to good designs takes a multifaceted approach that takes the aforementioned aspects into consideration. Of course, there are design practices like making use of nudges, using specific font faces, use of logos and pictograms, etc. However, these relate more to the process of thinking about design itself rather than the process of creative thinking. Furthermore, the creative thinking process is very broad and varied from designer to designer (or person to person), and obviously there is more to it than can ever be discussed in one blog. However, I have tried to target some very common themes that I myself came to understand as a process in the Wayfinding class – through practice and through theory.

One final aspect that I will now address is the conclusion of the creative thinking process. You as a designer have now found yourself in a situation where you have come up with many good designs. How do you now conclude the creative thinking process and settle on one? Well, maybe discard the first one because it might have many personal biases, though this might be counter-intuitive when the first design might be the best one. So, think about the design through the lens of the aspects discussed in this guide and through the aspects of a good design. Then try and answer the question you ask yourself that which one is the best. Maybe it is the one that fits in well into most of the criteria of a good design coming out of a good creative thinking process. Then select that one and hope it works out. Otherwise, you learn and use this lesson to inform your decision, choice, and creative thinking process as a designer the next time you have to make a good design. Eventually, you become a designer whose creative thinking process is such that the designer translates themselves into their design, making it unique to themselves yet equally or even more effective. And most importantly, you can now differentiate yourself from millions of people ‘creatively’ coming up with designs using Google.

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.