Deep Research
Our wayfinding systems support people movement and navigation through an investment in research into user behaviour, psychology and navigational needs.
Wayfinding Design
We understand that the heart of a good wayfinding (sometimes call wayshowing) design is about delivering a better experience by aiding navigation and orientation for all customers – getting lost is an immediate detraction from the experience. Our output is a carefully crafted solution that works harmoniously with the visual language of your brand but delivers the functional need for the user.
We know that wayfinding and wayshowing is about more than just signs – signage design is just one channel to communicate wayfinding information. Wayfinding design has to work with architecture, landscape, digital information, landmarks & other visual cues such as lighting, interaction with staff and other people all as a cohesive, well planned system.
Services
Scope Beyond Strategy
We focus on more than just strategy, we make wider considerations around human behaviour, commercial drivers and holistic experience.
Concept Design
The visual language and story of your brand will be expressed through your wayfinding system, developed alongside your branding agency or independently.
Detailed Design
We tell the story of your space with our full graphic design service. This includes signage, mapping, pictograms and typeface.
Digital
We run trials and usability tests with end users on the concept to leave you with a usable, considered digital design solution that can be taken into development.
Implementation
We value the independence of our advice to you, we work with several trusted manufacturers on material selection, industrial design, production and install.
Our Work
Our thinking
The Psychology of Wayfinding and Wayshowing
Navigation is a human process – it is about our individual perception of a space and how we process information and make decisions. There are significant differences between all of us when it comes to these processes. Good wayfinding design is impossible without a good understanding of behaviour and psychology.
We bring the discipline of human factors into our research and wayfinding design process. This gives our team the benefit of scientific knowledge and research methods to sit alongside the creative thinking of the designers. This integration is at the heart of how CCD thinks and works.
The Importance of Good Strategy
At the core of a good, long lasting wayfinding system is a robust strategy. The strategy is where we explore your objectives and the design implications of your longer term plans.
In the strategy we define the user behaviours and examine the principles by which people move through your space and where decisions are made. We also explore the cultural or language diversity of your user group. The strategy also sets out our approach to accessibility and sustainability.
The strategy is the driver for design in how it sets out the principles we will use for information content and hierarchy, how the visual language of your brand identify will be addressed and how we will use pictograms and colour.
Missing out the strategy is often a shortcut taken to save cost – in our experience this is always a mistake as it leads to higher costs in the long run.
Digital & Mobile Wayfinding
Increasingly, our clients are wanting to find ways to bring in digital solutions within their wayfinding systems. With the rise of services like Google Maps, we all recognise that the device we carry around can play a role in helping us to find our way. We take a strategic approach to looking at how best to integrate mobile, kiosks, web and other digital platforms into our systems. Getting the right common thread running through all the touchpoints is key to success.
The emerging area is the use of augmented and virtual reality in future wayfinding. We have a number of technology partners we are collaborating with to see how we can get the best from this technology and deploy it in the right situation.
Co-Designing with You
Our approach to wayfinding design is to co-create solutions with you and with your customers. We use established processes to engage your team throughout the design and development of the system.
We involve real end-users through participating in research activities, evaluating concepts and testing prototypes.
Wayfinding is more than just signs…
Wayfinding is about orientation, direction giving and decision making – that’s why there’s a trend to call it ‘wayshowing’, even though it’s exactly the same thing. As humans we use a variety of clues and cues in our environment to do these. The architecture or landscape of the built environment, lighting, landmarks, the behaviour of others around us…all of these support wayfinding in addition to the more deliberate interventions such as signage or maps.
To make this ecosystem work, we need to start at the beginning with the people, what they are trying to do and the likely mental models they might build. Only then can we think about the different design solutions we might bring in of which only one might be signs.
Inclusive Design
Finding your way with any sort of impairment, physical or mental, is often still tremendously difficult. Our philosophy is doing design driven by human behaviour as we see it as a way to improve the experience of the built environment for everyone. So our role is to champion the needs of all users of a space and through inclusive design, make sure it is as accessible as possible.
To do this we have to understand the daily experience of people with different impairments. Sometimes we do this through ethnographic research such as our work with Guide Dogs for the Blind; other times we need to engage with organisations and charities that represent different groups. We also do our own research projects to investigate user needs and how we might address them in design. We are committed to getting the right technologies into environments, including those such as Wayfindr.
