A tool for signage placement recommendation in hospitals based on wayfinding metrics

Abstract

Navigating a healthcare facility can prove challenging to both new and existing patients and visitors. Poor or ineffective use of signage within the facility may enhance navigational difficulties. Signage strategies within facility design tend to be produced without consideration of how people typically navigate a space. Thus, strategies that ‘work on paper’ may not, in reality, aid or optimize patient and visitor wayfinding. Existing strategies for determining signage placement may also prove costly in terms of time spent on manual analysis of a facility’s floor space, including the potential for overlooking prime signage locations when analysing large floor plans. This paper presents a tool which aims to aid signage placement strategies by analysing facility design and routes within it, based on natural wayfinding metrics found in existing literature. The tool is designed to enable quick analysis of large designs for analysing multiple routes, highlighting areas where signage placement would aid natural wayfinding. The outputs of the tool are presented as a colour map which overlays the original 3D model design, highlighting the key areas where signage may be appropriate. An example of how the tool can be utilised to aid effective sign strategy is demonstrated on a small healthcare facility design.

The effect of sound environment on spatial knowledge acquisition in a virtual outpatient polyclinic

“…It reduces lost staff and patient time and users' dissatisfaction because of being disoriented, enhances staff concentration for not being interrupted to provide directions, and minimizes the costs of delayed or missed appointments. In hospitals and other healthcare units, wayfinding is generally emergency with patients or visitors aiming to find their destination as quickly as possible, either for an appointment or finding the emergency unit, or visiting a patient ( Greenroyd et al, 2018 ). In this process, unfamiliarity with the setting and crowdedness puts the visitors in a stressful situation as they try to navigate and find their way within the space ( Baskaya et al, 2004 ).…”

Assessment of Wayfinding Performance in Complex Healthcare Facilities: A Conceptual Framework

“…What makes wayfinding especially challenging in healthcare settings compared with other structures such as airports and shopping centers is that the wayfinding process in a healthcare setting is highly purposeful at its core. Therefore, it is considered a highly resolute type of wayfinding [14], while wayfinding in airports, shopping centers, and public parks are regarded as a recreational type of wayfinding [15]. Public perceptions of the role of wayfinding in the promotion of recreational walking routes in greenspace have been investigated whereby cross-sectional surveys reveal that urgency levels differ depending on the Space, and Society.…”

Mapping a hospital using OpenStreetMap and Graphhopper: A navigation system

“…It was also asserted that visitors searching for a shorter path became confused when the paths were too complex with interconnections. Consequently, as claimed by [7], with the lack of information provided, it can ca use the visitors to arrive late for the appointments [8] and thus shortens the visiting hours [9]. Therefore, this HKL navigation system (HKLNS) is developed to navigate visitors of HKL to the desired departments and reduce the time taken to arrive there.…”