The Practical Guide to Information Design

CHAPTER 9

How to help people find their way clearly

To help your audience get from here to there, a worthy goal for every information-design project, you have to know where “here” is for the audience. That's as true for a Web site, manual, or proposal as it is for a traditional wayfinding format such as a map, floor plan, or sign. And “here” refers as much to audience members’ knowledge, background, and skills as it does to their physical location.

In this chapter, we'll look at some wayfinding case studies and apply their principles to other kinds of projects. The goal of each design is to help people navigate, whether on foot or wheel or by hand and eye alone. Notice how the designs demonstrate useful information-design principles … and when they don't.

In the traditional sense, navigating or “wayfinding is the science of organizing and defining a sequence of posted messages to make a building or space as self-navigable as possible,” according to “Basic Principles of Wayfinding” by Wayne Hunt in Designing and Planning Environmental Graphics Design.

Expanding the concept of “space” to include any information-design project, the key words in the definition are “as self-navigable as possible”—design that's so logical and intuitive that people can find their own way to their goal or destination, easily and without frustration.

To find the appropriate design, Hunt advises, look at:

• the number of first-time visitors
• how urgently they need the services they're seeking
• how many destination ...