Finding a way is an important but somehow lesser known part of everyday life. Its prevalence has made the use of signs a second habit of transportation. A good wayfinding can think, so you don’t have to. You can provide clues to direct your visitors in a particular direction.
Whether you are embarking on a commercial or retail navigation project to complete, the five basic principles of wayfinding remain the same. By following these principles, you can maximize your effectiveness and also improve your user experience.
Wayfinding can also increase your revenue by letting visitors know what products and services are available and where they are located. There are some guidelines that should be used in wayfinding. We’ll talk about these below, but first let’s look at the purpose of wayfinding.
Why do we need wayfinding?
Whether in stores, airports or other public places, people face challenges when their navigation experience is difficult. On the other hand, they want to return to spaces that are easy to navigate, comfortable and fun. They don’t go to places that can cause confusion, negative experiences, and frustration.
By implementing well-designed wayfinding principles, most facilities create a better sense of safety and understanding in unfamiliar locations. This is especially true in areas where there is an emergency. In addition, well-designed spaces and floors can help contemplate spaces while controlling traffic flow, making this experience better for everyone.
Finally, wayfinding is also useful for the elderly and children. Older people and children who experience difficulty getting around may also need to rely more on signs than younger people. Wayfinding encourages people to walk or bike farther, explore new areas, and even develop a sense of direction.
Wayfinding principle:
In this blog, we’ll walk you through each of these principles as you understand how they fit into your design process.
Create identities everywhere: This is the principle that makes each wayfinding destination recognizable and creates companions that allow users to connect with their surroundings. It can be difficult to create structured navigation when all sections of a larger space are combined into one section of her.
Ensuring that visitors are location aware and familiar with a particular place is an important wayfinding principle. Graphic navigation signage is created to turn each area into a prominent landmark, making it easy for users to navigate. This can be done in subtle ways.
You don’t need crazy flashing lights or overly complicated designs to make each area stand out. Color schemes, textures, graphics, finishes, etc. are all effective ways to adhere to the principles of wayfinding.
Using Landmarks for Directions: Landmarks are great for navigation and are often the most practical part of a site as designated waypoints around a space. Wayfinding is the triggering of direction selection by clear visual cues.
Landmarks are instantly recognizable, making directional decisions more memorable. When designing a navigational signage system, it is important to consider the most recognizable and memorable parts of the area.
I need a set of landmarks that I can link to using signposts. Building pathfinding relationships between these points is useful because it allows us to focus on the user’s path and also define the information space.
Directions should be used sparingly as multiple landmarks can be overkill. It’s best to use tall signs, such as monoliths or totem signs, to form visible reference points that can be spotted from a distance.
Create a structured path: The principle of wayfinding is to move the user from point A to B in a structured way. The first way to create well-structured wayfinding paths is to ensure that each path has a start, middle, and end point that is clearly communicated to the user.
A navigator should be able to easily navigate between points without getting lost. It’s best to create well-defined directional paths to improve navigation efficiency. Large areas such as universities and hospital wards benefit from well-structured corridors.
Markers need to be placed strategically on the route and need to be position aware so the navigator knows they are in the right place and heading in the right direction.
Create regions of different visual characteristics: This is important when traveling over large areas, as it is the principle of mapping space into small segment sections. Useful for making maps of areas easier.
The trick to finding a way is to apply well-defined attributes to all sections, giving them their own code and ID. Color coding is a common way of giving each section a unique character, often found in areas such as airports, security areas, and terminals.
You can make the area as small or large as you want, but it doesn’t matter if it’s far away from other areas. Dividing the main areas of your facility makes it easier to navigate between spaces. Regions should provide cues to restore position by creating associations between features such as color and graphics.
Assigning a character defines the position of each segment in the navigator, but you get lost in them. When designing wayfinding for large spaces, it’s best to look for easy ways to divide areas for easier navigation with different colors and fonts.
Symbols and Iconography: Symbols and iconography are important graphic elements to convey a clear and immersive wayfinding and branding experience. Once the sign type is clearly identified, the graphic design elements need to be defined.
For customers with an established visual identity, branding guidelines help define the style of typography and iconography along with colors and finishes. If not, it can be an opportunity to get creative and define specific parameters.
Typography and lettering should be legible, color palettes should be distinguishable, and icon styles should be easy to find and recognize. It’s also a good idea to assign codes to all colors, finishes, icons and type settings that can be referenced during signage.
Don’t overload multiple navigation choices. This wayfinding principle is about cohesion and limiting user choice. This is accomplished by providing relevant information and defining one or two routes that can be signposted regardless of whether there are many ways to travel between points.
This principle avoids confusion and creates a clean and efficient navigation process. This is important for spaces such as museums where visitors want to head to exhibits in order. Making detour options out of the question also gives the navigator the intended experience of the space while keeping the desired path to the navigator.
It’s important to keep the information displayed short and clear so that it gets the point across and directs the user in the right direction. Keeping things simple is the most important thing in wayfinding.
Conclusion:
Wayfinding is nothing but a form of communication design. This is essential and makes navigation easier. If you have always been interested in learning more about communication design, the best way to go is to pursue a Bachelor of Design in Communication Design from Chitkara University.
Enroll for a Bachelor of Design in Communication Design and learn more about wayfinding and other communication design concepts.