Wayfinding System — TU Lampang Campus

Designing something you can then measure

Most wayfinding is judged on how it looks in a photograph. This system was designed so that it could be judged on whether people actually find their way.

Three behavioural indicators were defined before installation — travel time, navigation errors, and hesitation at decision nodes — and measured through a post-occupancy evaluation. Designing against measurable indicators changes the decisions themselves: sign placement follows where people actually pause, not where a wall is convenient.

Evidence-based wayfinding

The resulting model — evidence-based wayfinding — is now taught as a lens in the author’s textbook and forms the basis of a manuscript under review at Facilities (Emerald, Scopus Q1).

Preliminary findings show improvement across all three indicators; the figures are held until the paper completes peer review.

Why it matters here

This is the clearest case of how the practice is meant to work: a design problem produces an artefact, the artefact is instrumented, and the measurement produces knowledge that another designer can use without having visited the building.