fd2s Blog

In parts one and two of my post about wayfinding committees, I talked about the need for, and potential benefits of, wayfinding committees at healthcare institutions. Now I would like to wrap up this discussion by talking about who participates in a typical committee, and how these committees are commonly structured.

Recommended Wayfinding Committee Members
The ideal size and makeup of a wayfinding committee will vary widely from one institution to another, depending on the size, service offerings, and organizational structure of that institution. In most cases, however, the committee will consist of representatives from some combination of the following departments (listed here along with the unique knowledge or skills they bring to the committee):

Senior Executives
Financial resources
Ability to help rally support across the institution

Design and Construction
Knowledge of delivery process for construction projects
Knowledge of current construction schedules
Knowledge of long-term master plan

Facility Support Services
Understanding of policies and processes for sign maintenance

Marketing
Knowledge of brand and identity issues
Knowledge of patient and visitor demographics

Internal Communications
Access to internal communications tools that could be used to support wayfinding efforts

Development/Fundraising
Understanding of donor recognition needs in existing and planned facilities

Key Clinical Departments
Knowledge of challenges faced by patients and caregivers
Representation of front-line hospital employees

Security
In addition to knowledge of security-related signage issues, security staff often play a key role in disseminating wayfinding information from security or information desks.

Parking
Understanding of limitations and opportunities associated with current valet programs or self-parking facilities

Volunteer Services
Like security staff, volunteers typically field large numbers of wayfinding inquiries, and they are likely to continue to play a role in the success of future wayfinding initiatives.

Recommended Committee Structure
Like committee size and makeup, the ideal structure for a wayfinding committee will vary by institution. In our experience, however, the most effective committee structure incorporates a steering committee, a core group, and task forces, as diagrammed below.

Steering Committee
The steering committee is the primary client group that provides high-level direction, including strategy and design approvals, to the consultant team. The steering committee should include 10-20 people from the departments that will be most affected by the wayfinding project. The amount of time required from members of the steering committee is minimal, and they shouldn’t expect to spend more than 2-3 hours per quarter on committee-related activities.

Core Group
The core group is a subset of the steering committee. It is responsible for providing day-to-day direction to the consultant team. The core group should consist of 4-8 people including the primary project manager on the client side, the executive sponsor, and a small group of other key decision makers. Core group members should expect to spend 5-6 hours per month on activities related to the wayfinding committee, which of course is in addition to the time they may spend managing other (non-committee) aspects of the wayfinding project.

Task Forces
Task forces are groups of client-side subject matter experts that can be called upon to provide specific knowledge and direction about the details of an organization’s operations. Task forces could be established for critical categories such as signage, maintenance, IT, marketing and communications, metrics, and other areas as warranted by the project. Task force members may spend up to two hours per month on committee activities.

I hope that this information is valuable as you consider the potential use of a wayfinding committee at your own institution. If you haven’t already, make sure to review Part One and Part Two, or you can visit the fd2s web site to request request this information in the form of our Wayfinding Committees white paper, which combines it all into one tidy PDF.

In part one of my post about wayfinding committees, I offered a very general overview of the need for, and potential benefits of, wayfinding committees at healthcare institutions.

Now I would like to talk in a little more detail about the range of changes in recent years that have made it increasingly difficult to deliver simple, clear directions to patients and visitors, and increased the need for wayfinding system coordination across the institution.

These changes include ever-growing campuses that are becoming more and more difficult to navigate. In addition, the ongoing technology revolution, while improving the way we access information, has brought complexity as well. Wayfinding tools like maps are now also viewed as brand-building or marketing materials, complicating the way messages are structured. Expanding hospital staffs lead to new and more complicated organizational charts. And increasingly compartmentalized budgets have complicated funding strategies for projects that extend across large campuses or multiple building phases.

All of these developments have made wayfinding more difficult in ways that many institutions will find very familiar:

• As healthcare campuses grow, existing wayfinding challenges seem to get exponentially worse. New buildings bring new entry points. New garages require drivers to make more decisions. Longer corridors are harder to navigate. And new destinations create more information that never seems to fit on the old signs. The increased complexity brought on by growth requires new organizational models and new communication tools for wayfinding information.
• The technology revolution over the past decades has substantially raised the bar for companies that provide services to the public. Patient expectations about how they are served by hospitals are no exception: if I can change my seat on an airplane at a touch screen kiosk, if I can raise my credit limit by talking to a machine over the phone, if FedEx can tell me exactly where my package is at 3:00 a.m., then why can’t the hospital tell me where to park and how to find Grandma’s room? Patients and visitors expect the ability to access information via the Internet whenever they want it. They expect an operator to be able to give them directions to the right garage when they call from the car. They expect maps, signs, and people to all use the same language when giving directions. Meeting these expectations may require new applications, new hardware, new connections between databases, new training, and new support strategies.
• Patients are consuming more and more health-related information. This means that they are seeing more and more of your institution’s web pages, brochures, flyers, and pamphlets. In order to cut through the visual noise, hospitals are employing more sophisticated marketing and branding methods. Determining the best way to coordinate effective wayfinding information with medical and institution-related information can be a delicate task.
• Institution staffs are growing. And as institution staffs grow, it often becomes increasingly unclear who has responsibility for providing accurate wayfinding information. The design department that erects new buildings? The facilities department that operates the buildings? The marketing department that draws the maps? The IT department that runs the wayfinding web site? Or a series of outside consultants that all have different ideas? The list goes on. Without clearly defined responsibilities, a great wayfinding system can’t be designed, implemented, or maintained.
• As institutions grow, their organizations and budgets are becoming more complicated. This makes it more difficult to sort out which entities or departments are responsible for funding wayfinding systems. Many large organizations include both academic and patient care components. Some include partnerships with multiple external institutions and condo or landlord/tenant relationships. Capital budgets may fund a new wayfinding system that must be maintained from an operations budget. When a wayfinding system extends through and between multiple buildings to serve patients and visitors to multiple organizations with tools in multiple media, it becomes critical to understand and work within complicated budget environments.

In the next post in this series we’ll talk about the potential benefits of a wayfinding committee, and the range of individuals that can make up a typical committee. Or you can visit the fd2s web site to request a copy of our Wayfinding Committees white paper.

“What is the biggest challenge to overcome when addressing wayfinding challenges in healthcare environments?” It’s a question we hear often from clients and other institutions, and many are surprised by the answer. That’s because in most cases the biggest challenge isn’t related to the complex physical environment found in hospitals, or the unique nature of their visitors. More often the real challenge is the necessary coordination across hospital departments and the consensus building among diverse stakeholders that is required in order for a wayfinding solution to be successfully implemented.

Patients and visitors to modern healthcare facilities expect a high-tech, high-touch experience from start to finish – and that includes wayfinding. Solving wayfinding problems from a patient’s point of view means using multiple media (including web sites, printed maps, signs, touch screen kiosks, and trained staff) to deliver customized wayfinding information at various points in the patient’s healthcare experience. These delivery points might include the patient’s home, the doctor’s office, roadways or transit leading to the healthcare campus, on the campus itself, and in the facility’s lobbies and corridors.

Creating and managing the various tools and processes required to coordinate wayfinding information in this patient-centric manner demands the involvement of individuals and departments from throughout the hospital organization. And in our experience working with healthcare institutions of various sizes and with diverse organizational structures, we have found that the best way to deal with this challenge is through the effective utilization of a wayfinding committee.

A well-structured, well-led wayfinding committee with a clear approval process will yield many benefits, including a better-designed wayfinding system, a smoother implementation process, a more efficient use of the project budget, and an institution better prepared to utilize and maintain its investment.

We’ll discuss the value of wayfinding committees, as well as how they work, in more detail in future posts (Part Two, Part Three) or you can visit the fd2s web site to request a copy of our Wayfinding Committees white paper.