Wayfinding is not about signage
stuart June 20th, 2010
A few weeks back I was lucky enough to be asked over to beautiful New Zealand to run a workshop on wayfinding. A big thanks to Dr Mick Abbott for the invitation. I’m no expert in this area, but I’ve never let that stop me before! In design terms a lack of expertise can be used as an opportunity to ask dumb questions (always a good starting point) and to examine all assumptions about a design problem. In this case, how can a system be designed for a remote part of New Zealand that questions previous assumptions about wayfinding? Students in the Master of Design program at Otago University’s Design Studies Department pondered this question for a week following a trip to Arthur’s Pass to experience the impressive location for themselves. This question was complicated by further considerations of local identity: how do you create a wayfinding system that means something to locals and in terms of the local environment?In addition, the students each had a response that took the new Dept. of Conservation (DOC) motto into account: Protect, Enjoy, Be involved. How do you create a system that lures whistle-stop tourists out of the bus to enjoy the local sites, sounds and smells, while also catering to the more seasoned hiker? My undersatanding of wayfinding is that it’s not just about signage. In fact, signage can be a symptom that the marking of the way for travelers has somehow broken down. Paths and landmarks should tell us the way as much, if not more than graphics imposed upon a landscape; especially one as beautiful as New Zealand’s. To get the students to drop their assumptions about visual signage, they were blindfolded one by one and asked to navigate their way around their own university campus. This activity caused them to begin to rely on their senses other than sight. They soon began to sense when the ground was inclining, what kind of surface was under their shoes—grass, gravel, road, brick paving—but also to navigate using sound by keeping road and river sounds to one side or the other. Students reported a difficulty in depth and distance perception while blindfolded. They had a sense of where they were on campus but not how far along a path they were at any time. Blindfolding then throws new light on the sense of sight as a depth-finding sense, rather than a sense for merely regarding objects. This realisation informed many of the projects that followed. Back in the studio, students responded to prompts about their visit to Arthur’s Pass as well as examining unusual ways of creating landmarks and measuring and identifying landscape. I hope we can post some of these student projects soon.