5 Key Questions to Ask Before Undertaking a New Wayfinding Program.
For asset owners and operators in the Middle East, providing your visitors and guests with a positive visitor experience has never been more important than it is today.
As destinations and attractions of all stripes across Dubai clamor for visitor loyalty set against a backdrop of increased competition for time poor consumers, it’s important for developers and their marketing teams to recognize that the razzmatazz of visual and digital displays and the lure of once in a lifetime experiences (while important) falls short with consumers when compared to the simple things like not getting lost trying to find a destination and once there, being able to get around quickly and easily with a minimal amount of friction and maximum convenience. And when the fun is over and it’s time to go home, guests really do not want to get lost and frustrated in the car park on the way out.
Experienced wayfinding and placemaking practitioners like Creative Dialog, understand this and our role as a leading wayfinding consult is to assist our partners to deliver user centric, visitor focused wayfinding programs that have a positive impact on the visitor experience.
1. Engage with a quality wayfinding consultant.
When it comes to visualizing and implementing a wayfinding program, just like anything else in life and business you get what you pay for. Quality is key when it comes to selecting the right wayfinding partner as there are a myriad signage contractors and branding agencies that all claim to offer wayfinding however after 25 years of experience in the field, we have seen the outcome over and over again of not working with a professional wayfinding specialist. All across Dubai there are examples of this on a daily basis where the cutting of corners and use of lowest bid and / or inexperienced wayfinding companies or branding agencies stepping outside of their domain has led to a trail of wayfinding problems that in turn cause poor customer satisfaction and retention.
From signs that are too big or too small or poorly conceived and placed to information design that doesn’t work, we have seen firsthand the issues of working with inexperienced wayfinding partners where the end result is more often than not is a poor visitor experience and the resultant customer frustration ultimately requires the asset owner to replace the wayfinding system and start over. This abortive work in turn doubles or triples the cost from the initial outlay of the original solution, ironically in the process obliterating the quickly realized costs savings being chased in the first instance. In this case it is critical that procurement departments take the time to value the expertise they are seeking.
2. Start with a well thought out strategy.
Strategy is not a gimmick. Quality wayfinding consultants know that strategy is the key to visitor navigation success. If you’re assessing a prospective wayfinding consultant and the word strategy doesn’t come up in big bold letters or conversation, then our advice would be to start looking elsewhere.
As life and the spaces, we encounter become more complex, the need for cities, master developers and asset managers to understand how people get to these places and navigate them has become more important than ever to ensure visitors are provided convenience as well as memorable and positive user experiences and it all starts with a well-honed wayfinding strategy.
The need for any destination to allow visitors to easily find it and navigate it is essential in a competitive marketplace. A well thought out wayfinding strategy and good navigation planning by an expert when combined with the appropriate visual cues (as well as quality designed signage) can get most people from point A to Point B. However, without that carefully constructed wayfinding strategy and masterplan, poorly implemented signage can turn out to be inefficient, inconvenient, and potentially cause more problems than it seeks to solve.
When to comes to developing a wayfinding strategy, practitioners like Creative Dialog with a proven track record of success take the time and the effort to apply more than 25 years of experience to deliver highly detailed strategies for wayfinding across retail, hospitality, medical and the wider built environment like master planned residential communities that quickly and effectively explains the issues to the stakeholder group and puts the visitor first.
3. Real design is important, but designing for real people is even more important.
One of the greatest misnomers in the field of wayfinding is that wayfinding is just signage. Of course, to the casual observer this may look like the case, however to the seasoned professional - signage is only a small element that goes into framing a successful wayfinding strategy. With that said, when it comes to signage design itself, along with the information that is to be designed for the signage content, experienced consultants know that it’s important to have a strong handle on factors such as clarity, legibility, scale, color and materiality in order to provide the best design outcome for any given system.
These are ideas that often escape the novice designer where in lot of cases ‘design’ seems to mean copying a handful of images from Pinterest. At the other end of scale, we are often confronted with either a complete lack of design or overly elaborate and ostentatiously designed systems that seemed to be designed to either be trendy or as a trophy for the designer and not seemingly designed for real people to actually use, all the while the costs of implementation of such systems get higher and higher for no good reason. Designing to keep the client’s costs down while still being elegant and innovative is our approh and it’s one that is highly appreciated by our collaborative partners who understand the value of real design.
In most cases, the best designed wayfinding signage sits humbly in the background, doing its job with little fanfare while still remaining contextual to its environment. That’s because wayfinding is actually about understanding the human factors that go into how and why people navigate the spaces that they visit and yes signage can become a part of embellishing a site narrative or extending the brand expression of a well-crafted destination but seldom does the signage itself need to be the star of the show.
4. Visitor is the hero so know your audience.
As visitor experience specialists, our mantra and approach to practice is around human centered design. Everything we do as a strategy and design business is aimed at improving the visitor experience. When it comes to developing wayfinding systems across the Middle East, it’s critically important to understand the unique urban and cultural context of the region and pair this with experienced based strategies that resonate with people. Because people are at the center of everything we do.
This is where experienced practitioners take the time to deeply understand how people perceive and use the spaces around them on a daily, occasional, or seasonal basis and this comes from undertaking research and developing a deep-rooted sense of the region and the people that inhabit it.
With more than 15 years of experience across the Middle East we have developed this keen sense of local knowledge by collaborating on projects from Abu Dhabi and Dubai to Fujairah and Ras Al Khaima and on to places such as Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, Egypt and Qatar. Across all of these engagements we have undertaken a deep dive of the local context and audiences in order to tailor a nuanced strategic approach that meets the needs of the people and the environments that they consume. Pairing qualitive and quantitative audience behaviors and insights with a well-considered wayfinding strategy is a powerful tool to drive visitor experience success across any destination.
5. Don’t forget the importance of implementation
While clients like to pay an enormous amount of attention to the visual side of any wayfinding design, the implementation side of a signage and wayfinding signage program is equally if not more important than the renders as it is the final product that will be consumer and visitor facing.
When contemplating the right partner to collaborate with, it’s important to look past the showcase of renders and assess their ability to form positive relationships with all of the key stakeholders including and importantly the selected vendor who will be manufacturing and rolling out the wayfinding program. Quality design is easily let down by poor fabrication and it takes a highly experienced consultant team to be able to foresee potential issues at the implementation stage before they become a live issue at site, or worse – post roll out where extra time and resources are required for corrective measures.
The roll out of a wayfinding program can involve literally thousands of individual items across numerous sign types, with each custom-built item needing to be exacting in its output, content and placement in order for the overall system to be a success. Deciding on an implementation stratgy is another key aspect of the rollout, for instance will it be a phased rollout or a one-time launch? What resources will need to be allocated against what timeline and are the expectations at senior level realistic?
Only the most experienced practitioners who have a solid understanding of materiality, manufacturing processes as well as project and client-side management – along with all of the upfront skills like strategy and design are able to straddle these often-competing spheres of influence during a signage roll out. By collaborating with expert wayfinding consultants, you can be assured that your wayfinding system will be not only visitor focused and user friendly as well as being aesthetically pleasing but it will also mean that factors such as quality assurance and implementation are taken care of in the best way possible.
We have been up close and personal on all sides of the signage implementation process, and we know it is filled with obstacles and pitfalls that could arise from almost any angle. Thankfully, our two decades of experience has allowed Creative Dialog to lead from the front and bridge the gap between client and contractor through adopting an experienced-based approach that facilitates open communication and transparency as well as setting expectations of all stakeholders in the process. From budgeting andtendering all the way through to site and factory visits we take a highly proactive and quality focused approach to ensure that the system is rolled out properly each and every time down to the final sign.
Bottom Line
When contemplating your destination’s visitor facing needs, the implementation of a quality wayfinding and signage program should be at the top of the list. When doing so we highly recommend seeking out industry leaders who understand the need for a strategy forward approach that puts people first while still being able to handle all of the various factors that make up a desirable outcome for both client and visitor.
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Get in touch with Creative Dialog today to see how we can distill these insights into actionable strategies and solutions to improve the visitor experience across your organization.