Two recent encounters with wayfinding problems reinforce my belief that good (that is, effective) signage still matters. With the advent and dominance of GPS systems and mobile apps, some people think that being able to find your way is a snap. It isn’t, especially when you are on foot.
Problems With Signage in the Community
Consider this outdoor example from my hometown. I was in my bank parking lot, which borders a busy street, and a woman across the parking lot called out, “Excuse me, can you tell me where the restrooms are?” At first I couldn’t imagine what she meant, but then she continued. “They told me the restrooms are next to the parking lot,” and then she pointed away from where we were standing and down the street. I surmised that she had asked someone waiting in a long line to get into a popular local bakery and was directed to the public restrooms, which do in fact exist and are adjacent to one of two parking lots nearby. There was a restroom sign posted on the street, but it was difficult to see amidst what I will call “signage clutter,” and the arrow on the sign wasn’t easy to make out. I walked over to her and pointed down the street, to the brick restrooms adjacent to the entry to a museum parking lot (see photo).
In this case, her wayfinding problem was solved by assistance from a human being (me) with knowledge of the area. As we all know, human beings with wayfinding knowledge are not always available.
Problems With Indoor Signage
Let’s take an indoor case. Many wayfinding problems occur in healthcare facilities (and a lot of other places, such as office buildings). A major reason for such problems is that the rabbit warren of corridors in those buildings and the complexity of the structure make providing adequate signage for all possible destinations a real challenge. Doing so can result in information overload (i.e., too much information to process). Typically, hospitals have a repetition of elements (e.g., corridors) that look the same, and the building sections have grown incrementally, often into a shape that would not have been recommended for ease of navigation. Thus, while general hospitals may have been planned to create legible (i.e., understandable) spaces, their pattern of growth often creates spatial configurations that are hard to support with signage.
In the current example, I was visiting a relative who had undergone a knee replacement, and when I entered the lobby, the receptionist handed me a piece of paper that said:
FROM THE MAIN LOBBY ENTRANCE
- Procced straight down the hallway.
- At the end of the hallway turn LEFT to the GREEN elevators.
- Take the GREEN elevator to the 4th floor.
- Exit the GREEN elevator and turn LEFT.
- Turn LEFT again, the patient care unit 4.2 will be on your RIGHT.
As an environmental psychologist and someone who focused on wayfinding earlier in my career, I had to shake my head when handed this piece of paper. If the signage in healthcare facilities were really good, would we need these paper aids? Yet, in all fairness to the facilities, there are many people who need such assistance (e.g., people with memory problems). It is also the case that people visiting healthcare facilities are generally anxious, even if just visiting, which decreases memory function.
Signage Can Save Lives
You may be thinking, "What's the big deal?" It's just a minor inconvenience to have to ask for directions to a restroom or in a hospital or to avoid being late for an appointment. But the consequences of effective signage can be far more important.
In 2016, a woman named Laura Levis having an asthma attack died outside a hospital emergency room in Massachusetts when she could not find an open entrance. As a result of this tragedy, what is known as Laura’s Law became signed legislation in 2021. Its goal is to address the need for effective signage in hospitals, and the Department of Public Health in Massachusetts is charged with implementing statewide standards for improving lighting, signage, wayfinding, and other elements connected to patient access to emergency rooms in Massachusetts. As soon as an individual is on the hospital campus, directional signs to the ER must be available (Dwyer, 2023).
Wayfinding Systems Are an Afterthought
Wayfinding systems often have been viewed as an after-the-fact application—in other words, something that is overlaid on the environment after the structure is complete (Devlin, 2014). And while we may eventually have mobile applications widely available in indoor environments for wayfinding use in hospitals, that is not currently the case (Morag & Pintelon, 2021), although a number of hospitals, including Johns Hopkins and Boston Children’s Hospital, use digital wayfinding. Such mobile applications for wayfinding are more common in commercial environments. Johns Hopkins notwithstanding, you are more likely to currently find wayfinding support such as electronic directories and interactive kiosks in healthcare environments.
And if you need convincing that signage is an afterthought, consider this example from NYC (see photo).
Relying on Technology to Find Our Way: Is There a Cognitive Cost?
It is clear we are headed in the direction of increasing reliance on technology to help us find our way. But is there a cost in terms of our cognitive function? For example, is there a negative impact of GPS on spatial cognition? Some cross-sectional research by Dahmani and Bohbot (2020) suggests that people who have a greater lifetime experience using GPS perform more poorly when asked to do a wayfinding task without the use of GPS. Moreover, in a small follow-up (i.e., longitudinal) study, those who had greater reliance on GPS since the first data collection showed a greater drop-off in spatial memory that depends on the hippocampus. Yet we shouldn’t jump to the conclusion that GPS use has a necessary negative impact on actual wayfinding skill. While a 2024 meta-analysis of 23 studies (Miola et al., 2024) showed a negative association of environmental knowledge with GPS use and also a negative association with self-reported sense of direction, there was no statistically significant association with wayfinding performance.
The Importance of Looking Around
As we become more and more absorbed by our technological devices for wayfinding such as Smartphones and their mobile apps, we should not forget the value of simply looking around our environment. Yes, designers need to devote more time and energy to creating effective wayfinding systems, but there is great value in visually engaging with our surroundings. Not only will this likely result in better wayfinding experiences, but it will also remind us that our surroundings have the capacity to surprise and fascinate us. We have to look around to know that.