Wayfinding Signage: 3 Best Practices for Designing Effective Signage

Wayfinding Signage: 3 Best Practices for Designing Effective Signage

Wayfinding signage technology can help you provide helpful, engaging content when and where you need it. Follow three best practices to ensure your signage is effective.

What is Digital Signage?

Digital signage goes beyond traditional print signage to present dynamic information and branded content on LED, LCD or plasma displays throughout a range of settings—from hospitals to schools, retail stores, hotels, transportation hubs and more. It’s more compelling that traditional print signs and more cost effective, as it’s quick, easy and cost-effective to update.

Wayfinding Signage

Signage that helps people navigate a space and find what they’re looking for is known as wayfinding signage. Wayfinding includes everything from a classic red EXIT sign to a department store layout or hospital map. While traditional wayfinding signage is utilitarian and static, today’s interactive digital technology offers so much more.

Interactive Digital Wayfinding Signage

Interactive digital wayfinding signage includes kiosks, touchscreens, instant messaging capabilities, custom-branded content, 4K video feeds, turn-by-turn directions and more. This technology allows you to display multiple content zones on a single screen and create playlists of content that can be scheduled by day and time or trigged by events, such as high traffic in a certain area. 

Benefits of Digital Wayfinding Signage

Go beyond pointing the way. Digital wayfinding signage helps you create an experience. In the same way that digital marketers rely on user behavior to trigger online ads, you can use innovative digital signage to serve relevant content. You can gather insights based on where people are in your facility and provide directions, information and other content on a by-location basis. This technology can also help you deliver alerts and manage traffic flow.

Uses for Digital Wayfinding

Enhanced wayfinding is increasingly common in businesses, schools and public spaces. Airports might use wayfinding signage to update passengers about flight changes and direct people in real time to their new gate. Shopping centers use it to point customers to certain products or special offers. In some hospitals, patients use a kiosk to check in before receiving turn-by-turn directions to their doctor. Universities use wayfinding signage to promote events, display social media feeds or provide safety alerts in addition to interactive campus maps. 

3 Best Practices

No matter your application, three best practices ensure users have a positive experience with your wayfinding signage and, by extension, your business or brand.

1. Ease of orientation
   Ensure any interactive components are intuitive and easy to use. Your signage should require little thought to figure out. From there, provide clear directions that orient users before sending them on their way.
   
   
2. Clarity of design
   While today’s digital signage makes just about any type of visual display possible, be selective with your typeface and colors. Make design choices that are in line with the rest of your branding to maintain a consistent aesthetic.
   
   
3. Concise navigation
   Avoid distracting your user with too many bells and whistles. The primary goal of your wayfinding signage is to help people find what they need. Avoid extraneous information that could disorient people.

iCOMPEL from Black Box is an award-winning digital signage solution that offers touch interactivity, HTML5 support, transitions, transparency, localized customization, streaming video and a host of other advanced features. Pair this technology with Black Box’s content creation services to provide your users with user-friendly, on-brand, compelling content that contains interactive and multimedia elements. To learn more visit our iCOMPEL product page.