Clearly Described Steps
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The Victorian Department of Human Services, responsible for all Hospitals in Victoria, wanted to develop a wayshowing system that could be applied to the outpatient departments of all hospitals around the state. Through a design consultancy, Growth Solutions, ID/Lab was asked to develop this wayfinding guidelines document so that hospitals could implement that strategy themselves. |
From the information gained at user workshops, combined with observational surveys and thorough secondary research, we distilled what the users perceived as problems whilst wayfinding through large hospital environments.
One of the outcomes was that the name ‘Outpatients’ had no meaning for most of the users, especially users from non-English |
speaking or lower socio-economic backgrounds. The decision was made to use the word ‘Clinics’ instead. We also recommended that the long and difficult medical department names could be changed to simple letters or numbers: ‘Clinic D’ is easier to read, say and understand than ‘Otolaryngology’. The system is now used as a standard by DHS. |
