Intuitive Wayfinding in Healthcare

Effective Wayfinding Solutions for Healthcare 

Wayfinding refers to a set of design strategies that help orient and navigate people within unfamiliar built environments. Within healthcare, effective wayfinding employs signage, colour coding, symbols, and other environmental cues to guide users through complex spaces. 

Wayfinding is about how the built environment communicates with its users, offering simple, clear information on location and context while reducing confusion and anxiety. It always emphasises the experience of those who are either new to or unfamiliar with a space. In healthcare, patients and their families are most often new or infrequent visitors to a facility. The process of receiving healthcare can already be stressful, so reducing those emotions through design can improve the overall patient experience and positively influence healthcare outcomes. 

The priority for improving wayfinding in existing facilities should be basic interventions like building identification signage, directional signage, pathway definition, entrance definition, and landmark definition. Currently, these are often overlooked or poorly executed, and as a result, can be ineffective and confusing.

Once these basics are in place, there are many opportunities to improve the wayfinding experience by implementing a more integrated and comprehensive system. 

Beyond visual and environmental improvements, human factors, such as staff training and knowledge, along with digital factors, like apps and digital directories, can work with the built environment and signage to aid different groups in wayfinding and enhance the overall experience. 

Visual "Reading" of the Space 

Signage, including words, symbols, and icons, are all critical to orienting people in a space. However, signage requires some cognition on the part of the user to understand. It requires that people put active effort into reading signage to orient themselves. The most efficient wayfinding systems include a combination of the following: 

Bypass cognitive processes by using design elements that ‘speak’ directly to users' psychology, avoiding the extra effort required to process language or decipher symbols. For example, most people have instinctive reactions to colours, shapes, lines, and patterns. Incorporating these elements into the built environment can help orient people within the space while making minimal cognitive demands. 

Utilise flooring as a wayfinding solution. Floor customisation can be used as a form of signage; consider how the use of colour and visual symbols on flooring can provide subconscious cues that guide individuals from one area to another as efficiently as possible. Utilising different flooring colours and textures to demarcate various zones, such as patient rooms, waiting areas, and treatment zones, can help visitors navigate without confusion. Use flooring to create a colour-coded system to help identify and differentiate key spaces and including custom-designed flooring with symbols, numbers or words can further enhance navigation. 
 
Consider Light Reflective Values (LRVs). Elderly patients make up a significant and growing part of the hospital population and it is vital to consider the experience of those with sight loss when designing healthcare facilities. Taking the LRVs of large surfaces such as floors, walls, and ceilings into account helps create optimum contrast, enhancing visibility and aiding in spatial orientation. Effective colour contrast provides visual clues for things such as doors, handles, controls, and furniture, enabling people with diminished sight to navigate their surroundings more safely and intuitively.  

Make destination points easily identifiable. The use of medical terminology in signage can be overwhelming or confusing to patients. For example, a carer taking their child for treatment of an inner-ear infection may not understand what the Otolaryngology Department is, but will understand “Ear, Nose, and Throat.” 
Identify important locations by using distinctive design elements. This could be a unique entranceway, a piece of furniture, or a mural. It should be clearly visible and easy to describe—for instance, by having a recognisable colour, shape, or object. 

Clearly mark pathways and reinforce navigational cues. Visual cues can include naming signage, directional signage, graphics, easily identifiable landmarks, and view corridors. These cues must occur frequently along a user's path to provide reassurance, making reorientation easy and frictionless. 

Utilise multiple forms of communication. Visual, verbal and digital – effective wayfinding strategies should be multi-faceted. Interactive kiosks or visitor help desks can supplement pathways and signage by supplying map printouts or sending them to a patient or visitor's smartphone. 

Mobile technology. More recently, healthcare facilities have begun using mobile technology to enhance wayfinding. For example, an app called MyWay, which accesses hospital maps and locates users within the facility through smartphone-activated GPS, providing turn-by-turn directions. The app has the potential to significantly improve user experience by offering enhanced navigation in complex environments. 

Wayfinding is a crucial element in healthcare design, impacting patient experience, staff efficiency, and overall hospital operation. By integrating wayfinding strategies into the initial design stages, using intuitive design elements like colour and patterns, and leveraging technology, healthcare facilities can create environments that are easier to navigate and less stressful for patients and their families. This holistic approach to wayfinding not only supports better patient, visitor, and staff outcomes but also enhances the efficiency and effectiveness of the entire healthcare facility.