Banyule City Council had new urban wayfinding panels installed to make the locals understand their own neighbourhood better and to encourage them to walk more. ID/Lab was asked to carry out a survey to find out how well this signage did this.

We interviewed 177 people in the main shopping street—standing only 4 – 5 m away from one of the signs, finding only 18% of the respondents mentioned the signage when asked if they had noticed any changes to that particular area lately. 

Even more interesting is that only 20% of the people that had noticed the sign(s) had actually given it a closer look. The most heard comments were along the lines of ‘Why would I? I am from this area’ or ‘I come here all the time’.

There seemed to be little incentive for locals to even just check out what is on the signs. This could be because the design of the signs does not say ‘We may display something that could be interesting to you that you don’t know of yet’. 

The results of the survey showed that increasing engagement and local knowledge requires more than simply installing signs.

This project seemed to have been executed without thoroughly ascertaining what the users need and would like.