Contact:cdent@burningchrome.com
Muhlhausen, J. (2000). Wayfinding is not signage: signage plays an
important part of wayfinding, but there's more. Available at:
http://www.signweb.com/ada/cont/wayfinding0800.html
Wayfinding--locating and directing oneself in unfamiliar spaces--involves
explicit signage but also many other artifacts and cues which impact or
assist decision making (formulating an action plan) and decision executing
(implementing the plan). Effective wayfinding communicates a good
sense of where a person is and where they need to go to get where they
are going. Additionally it suggests where not to go. There are four
primary communicative elements: graphic communication, audible
communication, tactile communication, consistency of clues.
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This little article was quite interesting in and of itself--the notion
of subtle clues which suggest but don't force behaviors is very
appealing--however, it's relevance as a general metaphor for
information spaces is quite elegant.
Building architecture, as a discipline, has matured to the point where
subtle inferences, such as the burbling of a lobby fountain indicating
a public space, are accepted and expected. With research and practical
experience, the same will be true for information spaces. This will be
a welcome change: modern information architectures are heavy-handed
and blatant structures comprising dusty cinder blocks. In the future
we will see information accesses happening as absent-minded or
abstracted gestures into an ethereal but nonetheless structured space.
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