What we learn from the redesign of a hospital wayfinding system
Field notes on the people, places, and systems that keep things moving.
The bigger picture
Good design is often visible only in its absence: a door that opens the right way, a form that asks only what it needs.
The people closest to the redesign of a hospital wayfinding system tend to describe the work in unglamorous terms: a schedule, a checklist, a conversation that happens every week. That repetition is the point.
“A design is a promise about how something will age.”
The practical view
The most useful interface is the one that makes the next step obvious without making the current one feel stupid.
Scale changes the problem. A solution that works for ten people can fail at a hundred if the support structure never grows with it.
The open question
Repair is a design constraint. A product that cannot be opened is a product with a fixed lifespan.
The point is not to be certain. It is to leave the next person with a clearer view of the choices available to them.
For now, the redesign of a hospital wayfinding system remains a work in progress. That is not a disappointment; it is the normal condition of anything still alive.