In addition to signs: the human side of wayfinding

By: Dan Lane | Tags: Wayfinding Design & Signage

What makes an environment truly navigable? It’s rarely just the signs on the walls.

Dan Lane, Head of Wayfinding, reflects on why the most successful navigation systems operate as human-centered, adaptive, and emotionally intelligent ecosystems. Human interaction remains a vital component, as people provide a unique level of reassurance and adaptability that often static signs alone fail to match. Dan argues that integrated wayfinding systems perform best when they seamlessly combine clear signage with personalised assistance, when required, to help people confidently navigate complex environments and spaces.

An over-the-shoulder view shows a blonde woman in a polka-dot top holding a museum map and pointing to a section with her right hand. A person with dark hair is partially visible in the foreground, with their back to the camera, as they look at the map together. — A person holding a museum map and pointing out a section to someone stood beside, as they look at the map together.

We’ve never had so much information at our fingertips. In this modern digital landscape, information is available across websites, apps, display screens, email, messaging, even automated call centres – we can get answers really easily and they’re presented to us the second we need it. And if the details we’re looking for aren’t available, there’s always the chatbot to ask!

Wayfinding is another form of inanimate information presented to us at certain points on a journey. Be it in a physical form as we make our way around a space, or digitally on our phones, we can navigate better than ever. No more trying to look at a road map while driving through a town you’ve never been to before.

And while that source of endless information is wonderful, it’s not entirely fool proof. Have you ever asked a search engine something only for it to not answer your question completely? Did it respond to something like your question, but not your question exactly? And no matter how many different ways you rephrase the question, it still doesn’t quite get it right? As all-encompassing as tech is, and how good it is at most things, it doesn’t always disclose the exact information we need at the right time.

Luckily there’s another source of information we’ll always gravitate towards. If we’re in a new environment and aren’t sure where we should be going and we’re struggling to find the right message, we can always ask... another person. Even if we’ve received the answer to our question via directional signage or a directory, it’s often a natural reaction to also ask someone for additional help or to seek confirmation, particularly in high stress environments such as transport hubs and hospitals, or at busy sporting or live events. Great Ormond Street Hospital for example, has a team of helpers, identified by their purple polo shirts, to provide directions and information, and be that welcoming first point of contact. There is a level of reassurance like no other that comes from speaking to another human being which puts our mind at rest and confirms what we’ve already been told by environmental cues or signage.

A blurred motion shot of two visitors walking down an outdoor concrete staircase next to an indoor gallery entrance labeled "The Square 0" featuring information about J.M.W. Turner's Battle of Trafalgar. — Visitors walking down an outdoor staircase next to an indoor gallery entrance with signage displayed on the entrance wall.

Unlike a static message, people have the ability to adapt or customise an answer to a specific question. A recent piece of work saw Mima partnering with an international cultural destination, where we provided Customer Experience Strategy – including visitor research and observations, to understand how visitors navigated the building – and Wayfinding Strategy to provide recommendations for future design. The location’s existing wayfinding contained multi-language signage in order to speak to as wide a range of visitors as possible. This involved messaging in Arabic, English and French. The only problem was the largest demographic of the visitor base didn’t actually speak those languages at all; the research from our intercept interviews showed the most commonly spoken dialects among its visitors were Russian and Chinese. So what do you do when the majority of your guests can’t read the information you’re displaying? Additional signs could involve a lengthy process, be expensive and see an increase in visual clutter.

We spoke to the destination’s staff who, we discovered, had started to learn basic Chinese and Russian phrases in order to better understand visitors and answer those typical questions that were regularly asked: “How do I find the toilets?” “Where is the exit?” This led to greater communication between staff and guests, and raised the overall experience for the majority of international visitors. Our research uncovered a natural and organic solution that had arisen, and highlighted how a sign system ideally needs to be versatile and flexible to allow human interaction, through universally recognised symbols and consistent iconography, colours and layout rules. The situation we discovered is an example of an organic solution born out of a distinct situation, and obviously isn’t a long term fix – staff in cultural destinations can’t be expected to learn a new language just to do their job. But understanding your visitor demographic is vital and being able to communicate with them will have a profound influence on whether their visit was a success or not. Staff, helpers and volunteers can add a unique method to how spaces talk to their guests, and they do this alongside digital and static wayfinding.

An airport departure lounge with shops and people seated and standing waiting for flights. A person stands looking at a departure board screen, whilst blurred people move past them. — People waiting for flights in a departure lounge with departure board information screens.

Other demographic factors play a part. Working with a major transport hub in the Arabian Peninsula, Mima is currently implementing new wayfinding throughout its public spaces. A recent site visit gave us valuable insight into how the building operates – especially as a major hub for passengers catching transfer flights – and how users pass through the building and receive information. Serving a huge local region as well as destinations further east, the hub’s user base comes from an incredibly broad cross-section of people, with a range of ethnic, socio-economic status and varied literacy proficiency. Conscious that too much messaging might hinder people finding the details they need, the hub has introduced a team of passenger assistants to help users get to where they need to be. By letting signs handle less complex information, human assistants are freed up to provide details in the form of tailored answers, precisely when and where visitors need them most. Plus, it adds that extra layer of reassurance when an answer comes from someone who works there. The scheme has been very successful as it puts travellers at ease by making information quick and straightforward.

People standing looking at exhibits in a gallery. A person in a yellow t shirt with 'Lose yourself in the V&A' on the back is directing someone and pointing to the right — People moving through a gallery space with staff available to assist.

This isn’t suggesting the redundancy of signage. Integrated wayfinding supports human conversation and compliments the messages staff provide. Plus, there are many spaces where people aren’t needed and a well-considered sign system can communicate succinctly with visitors all by itself. Team members and signage can work together by using consistent terminology and language – especially in places like hospitals – and the sign system should support human instruction after the interaction has finished. A conversation naturally provides more in-depth directions than text on a sign ever will; those written messages then become the back up service to get visitors to the department, ward or room that they’re heading to. For some, it’s often quicker and easier to talk to someone as opposed to approaching a directory or interactive screen and trying to navigate its layout and terminology.

It’s human behaviour to ask another person for help or seek clarification. Thinking about this reminded me of a situation I found myself in years ago when I had a part time job at university. I was a waiter at a high street chain restaurant who were the first to go smoke free in the UK (long before the ban on indoor smoking). As such it took a while for patrons to adjust to the change and despite having two huge ‘no smoking’ signs on the front doors, people would still ask for a smoking table. Upon being told we no longer had a smoking section, one person asked, “Oh, you’re totally non-smoking now?” “Yes,” I replied. “Did you not see the two big signs on the front door?”. “I did,” he said. “But I refused to believe them.”

Written by:

Dan Lane
Head of Wayfinding

Dan is a Graphic & Wayfinding Designer with almost 20 years of commercial experience in the built environment. Covering sectors such as retail, education, healthcare, residential and transport, he is a conceptual thinker who puts the user at the heart of each wayfinding system, with experience working with notable clients including the Royal Opera House, London Stansted Airport, Westfield, and the England football team.