Digital Wayfinding Offers Safe, Essential Solutions During a Pandemic
The pandemic has challenged everyone to reconsider how we utilize and move through space relative to others. Wayfinding and digital signage innovations have integrated technology and deploy strategies to provide automated and contactless ways to help us navigate these new challenges.
Voice-activated wayfinding, contactless kiosks, and mobile
check-ins improve visitor satisfaction, eliminate confusion,
ease stress, and help enforce social distancing!
Wayfinding is the user experience of orientation and assistance to reach a destination. Whether you are trying to locate your doctor’s office, looking for another department in a store, or simply want to find the closest exit, wayfinding will point you in the right direction.
Digital signage is the most visual part of wayfinding. A good wayfinding system needs to provide easy-to-understand language and be well placed to be effective.
Without even realizing it most of us are familiar with the four most commonly used types of wayfinding. They help you navigate and give appropriate information:
- Informational: Provides useful information on the place where the users are, such as free WiFi, opening hours, etc.
- Directional: Direct users with arrows showing which way to go. These are most often located at junctions where the user must make a decision in order to proceed.
- Identification: To help users recognize where they currently are, identification signs can be placed at the entrances of buildings, parks, check-in locations, etc.
- Regulatory: These let people know what they can and cannot do in a given area and are most frequently phrased negatively with the aim of creating a safe environment. Examples include “no smoking” or “restricted area”.
We can all agree that knowing where to go and how to get there is important. But imagine receiving directions or information on restrictions in a human-like way with patience, empathy and a little extra information like points of interest along your way.
Check out what our friends at nuMedia Innovations are doing to support Safe Indoor Wayfinding with Personality!
