Christopher Pullman, vp of Branding and Visual Communications for WGBH until 2008, likens wayfinding to the home page of a website: "you scan the space to figure out where you are and find clues that will lead you where you want to go." Pullman points to the increasing use of the term interface design as a measure of the design world's awareness of the need to better understand end users and what they need to do in the environment.
The iPhone touchscreen represents an example of intuitive interface design. Two-year-olds with developing fine motor skills easily expand, shrink or swipe images with their fingertips. Wayfinding design strives for a similar measure of success, using lighting, color, imagery, spatial organization and other cues. Text signage is just one arrow in the quiver. We have seen the increasing success of computer interface design as it has evolved from the keyboard to the mouse to the touchscreen, and should aspire to similar ease of use in our built environments, using but not over-relying on text. When we introduce signage, it should be easy to read, understandable and fresh.
Print media provides another model. Pullman suggests we examine a magazine to uncover how "subtle grids and other other underlying structures support the content." Imagine these grids and structures as the architectural support for easy navigation in an interior or landscape. Signs and graphics can then be conceived of as an organic extension of this framework.
Given a spatial organization, how can we optimize the logic of its circulation? What systems of communication can we introduce that build on this logic? Answering these questions, and then making effort to present information clearly and without distracting noise, are the starting points for a successful wayfinding system.
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