Wayfinding for Health Facilities guidelines

After the success of our 2014 Wayfinding Guidelines for Health Infrastructure New South Wales, we were asked in 2020 to produce a new guideline to reflect the changed paradigms of hospital wayfinding.

Critical to the success of the manual is shifting the focus from signage alone to looking at wayfinding behaviour and how legible environments can support navigation and improve the Patient Experience.

Starting at the planning phase, the document describes a process for developing usability and legibility rather than a predefined outcome for it.

This allows designers more flexibility to adjust to the peculiarities of their site and demographics, while its broad approach will mean that designs can be optimised based on the latest research and best practices rather than being stuck at the date it was written. The document contains checklists for different project phases, letting teams work through the complex process of developing a wayfinding strategy and understand what is required at each point.

The high quality of the latest guidelines was recognised by the Australasian Health Facility Guidelines - they integrated our wayfinding guidelines into theirs.