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In January, I had the pleasure of touring the tremendous exhibits at the California Academy of Sciences. I interviewed the designers of the exhibits as well as their peers at the Academy for an article that has just been published in segdDesign, the quarterly magazine of the SEGD. Here’s a bit from the introduction:

Imagine receiving the following creative brief:

“Collaborate with a Pritzker Prize winning architect, evolutionary biologists and ecologists, and the staff of a 157-year-old acclaimed research institution to create a new generation of sustainable exhibition design for a space bathed in natural light and without walls, in the middle of Golden Gate Park, San Francisco.”

This was the challenge that brought together Jonathan Katz, founder and CEO of Cinnabar, a Los Angeles-based production and fabrication company, and Adam Brodsley, principal and co-founder of Volume Inc., a multi-disciplinary design studio in San Francisco. Katz, Brodsley, and a bevy of designers and exhibit specialists produced two main attractions for the new home of the California Academy of Sciences, the 412,000-sq.-ft. LEED Platinum museum that is transforming the definition of that word by its very being.

If you would like to read the article, download the pdf and post your thoughts below. (Above is a photo of a great quote from one of the exhibits – couldn’t find a way to work it into the article!)

I have been getting a lot of inquiries lately about touch-screen wayfinding kiosks, and it occurred to me that there might be some interest in this video, which demonstrates the kiosk component of the “Access” wayfinding program that fd2s created for the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Center in Houston.

You can get more information about the overall Access wayfinding program, which also included signage, architectural elements, printed materials, and staff training, in the fd2s web site’s M.D. Anderson Case Study. If that’s not enough, an even more detailed description of the project is available on our special Access Microsite.

When towns or cities recognize they have a wayfinding need – usually because they discover that visitors are constantly lost or that potentially popular visitor destinations are being underutilized – their first inclination is to install more signs. This is not surprising of course, since wayfinding is, after all, the practice of helping people to find their way, and signage is the field’s most obvious, long-standing tool.

But while signage may be an important part of the solution, taking such a narrow view of both the objectives and parameters of a wayfinding program will severely limit its potential benefits. An effective wayfinding program will actually consider much more than just signage, and if done correctly, it will have benefits that go far beyond simply helping people find their destination. A holistic approach to wayfinding will look at every possible point of contact with a user of the system, from the time they begin contemplating and planning their journey until they reach their final destination. The result will be something more than just great wayfinding. It will actually play a leading role in shaping the overall experience of visitors, which is a critical component of a strong, valuable brand.

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A few months ago, in a post about the 2008 Healthcare Design Conference, I mentioned some annual healthcare-related conferences for people interested in facility design. Since then, I have been wanting do a more comprehensive list of organizations that promote better healthcare design, and that have at least some interest in the role that wayfinding can play in improving the patient experience.

If you are a healthcare architect or facility manager who isn’t already familiar with all of these organizations, you should definitely give them a close look. And if you’re a wayfinding professional looking to develop a better understanding of how concepts such as family-centered care, patient satisfaction, and evidence-based design are shaping the environment at healthcare facilities, these groups are a great place to start.

1. The Center for Health Design

The Center for Health Design is the most active and robust of the organizations listed here. They are the driving force behind the annual Healthcare Design conference, which is the premier event for people interested in healthcare facility design, and they are also the creators of the Pebble Project, which is documenting the financial and quality-of-care benefits of better facility design, and the Evidence Based Design Accreditation & Certification program.

This is also the organization that gives the most attention to wayfinding, and seems to best understand both the impact that wayfinding can have on the patient experience, and amount of strategic thinking that goes into the development of a truly effective wayfinding program. They regularly feature presentations on wayfinding at the Healthcare Design conference, and have included the subject in many of their educational and research materials.

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As mentioned in Leslie’s recent post about delivering better wayfinding information online, we are big fans of Google Maps and the wayfinding-related things you can do with the Google API.

Now New York City and Google have partnered to create a web site (www.nycgo.com) and information center (at 810 Seventh Avenue) that use Google’s latest technology and information offerings to inform and direct city visitors.

The site has some great features and a lot of content, but the most interesting thing about this project may be the touch screens in the information center, which are demonstrated in this video.

Many complex facilities focus their efforts to improve wayfinding on the “real world” — physical signs to guide people in and around the environment. But even the most wayfinding-savvy organizations often do not extend their reach into the “digital world,” where many of their visitors start their journey.

Here are ten ways to deliver better wayfinding information online:

1. Provide an easy way for visitors to your web site to generate customized direction sets to or from your facility. Whether you offer an offsite link to a mapping web site like Google or Yahoo, or you invest the resources to create a customized tool on your own site, it is very helpful to visitors to be able to print accurate driving directions from their home to your campus.

2. Review the main mapping sites and confirm that they are providing accurate directions to your location. Google, Mapquest and Yahoo rely on third-party providers of street information and sometimes they can contain errors, such as incorrect street names or traffic flows. Each site offers ways to alert their providers about mistakes. Test getting directions to your address from different parts of town.

3. Explain parking options on your web site. If you have multiple parking options, like lots or garages and valet parking, list them all on your site, along with hours of operations and fees. Help your visitors determine the most convenient parking option for their destination.

4. Convey information about public transit options and private offerings such as intra-campus shuttles. Link to public transportation trip-planning sites, if available in your area.

5. Offer a version of your web site optimized for mobile browsing. With browser recognition, your web site can be optimized to deliver a mobile-friendly version for cell phone users. As we’ve said in a previous post, everyone now carries their own personal wayfinding device — the cell phone. Confirm that your visitors can find relevant information on their phones as they approach your facility or at your facility.

6. List all your street addresses on a single line, such as “500 Chicon, Austin TX 78702″ so that they can be easily pasted into a mapping application.

7. Alert your visitors about street closures and construction that may impede their journey to your facility. Alerts should be prominently placed on your web site and updated regularly.

8. For complex facilities and campuses, provide walking directions from parking to the visitor’s destination. Often the most frustrating part of a journey to a new facility is finding your way from parking into the right building and up the right elevator.

9. Offer information on popular amenities in the wayfinding section of your web site. Where can a visitor find food, a taxi stand or an ATM?

10. Maintain and update your wayfinding information on a regular schedule. Outdated information is worse than useless — it will negatively impact your visitors’ experience.

Our friends at the Center for Health Design are conducting a survey on the use of design research and evidence-based design in healthcare facilities, and how their growth (or lack thereof) is impacting the healthcare industry.

There are several questions that touch on wayfinding-related issues, and there’s even one question that asks specifically about the prevalence of “Integrated Wayfinding” in new healthcare facilities, which is nice to see.

The results of the survey will be published in a future issue of Healthcare Design magazine. The survey only takes about 15 minutes to complete, and when you finish you are eligible for a 50% discount at the CHD online store. So if you’ve had you’re eye on one of the Center’s publications or research reports, now’s your chance to get a deal.

The Architect’s Newspaper has a good writeup of the recent presentation of student proposals for design of a “compass decal” for the New York City Subway system. The purpose of the decals is to help help subway system users with the sometimes daunting task of orienting themselves when they returned to street level from above- or below-ground stations.

The student work, which is on display at AIA New York’s Center for Architecture through January 24, includes some intriguing ideas, particularly the attempts to utilize and expand upon the wayfinding tools that people use naturally, such as architectural landmarks and neighborhood boundaries.

This New York Times article from 2007 provides some background on the pilot program that was the impetus for this competition, and also has an image of the rather uninspired original version of the decal.

For some, the word “cartography” may still conjure up images of parchment maps and sexants on the high seas, but as Esquire reports in their profiles of the Best and Brightest 2008, four innovative designers are redefining the art and science of map-making.

There are two kinds of maps showcased in this short web showcase:

• Maps that overlay data onto traditional geographic maps, such as Laura Kurgan’s lacy world map that plots city population increases and decreases as a third dimension
• Maps used as navigational devices for large, non-geographic data sets, such as Eric Rodenbeck’s visualization of the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, ArtScope

Both types of maps are built upon vast collections of data, and when produced by thoughtful designers like Kurgan and Rodenbeck certainly inspire, inform and delight!

The Center for Health Design has revealed more information about their plans to begin offering accreditation for evidence-based design professionals. They announced that accreditation exams will be administered beginning in April 2009, and they have already released the first of three exam study guides.

According to the new EDAC web site, the accreditation is appropriate for anyone interested in becoming more knowledgeable about the evidence-based design process, including:

• Design Professionals
• Healthcare Facility Planners
• Clinicians
• Researchers
• Product Manufacturers
• Educators and Students

Healthcare architects and hospital facility managers would seem to be the most obvious candidate for this designation, but the broad description of potential recipients offered by CHD makes it pretty clear that other design-industry consultants shouldn’t have too much trouble reaching the level of proficiency needed to pass the accreditation test. I hope that plenty of hospital wayfinding consultants step up and participate so that we can keep wayfinding in the middle of the evidence-based design conversation.