Helping visitors to find their way

So many visitors wandering into the city and hopefully spending their time and money where the city needs it to be spent.  I'm facilitating a group of the city's stakeholders for a project titled wayfinding and storytelling.  The objective is to have visitors wander more strategically through the city and learn the stories which have woven its fabric.

In facilitating the group we've found that wayfinding and storytelling overlap at times but are essentially different.  The stories that come from a particular point of interest may not be where we need visitors to wander.  The story still needs to be told but perhaps not as part of the wayfinding system.

Sign posts tend to be the most popular method used by cities to help visitors to find their way.  But signs are simply information of what can be seen or done in a particular direction and they give the reader a choice.  This way to the art museum might be interesting, but not necessarily something the reader will choose to do.

What if people didn't really get a choice of the direction to walk?  Not fence them in and shepherd them along, but encourage them, entice them.  Two excellent examples of wayfinding by encouragement and enticement come from Geelong in Victoria, Australia and Hwaseong, South Korea.

Geelong has used several dozen pylons (100 I think) from an old wharf which burnt down.  The pylons have been carved to represent prominant characters of the city.  The pylons are also a reflection of Geelong's importance as a port city.  Each time you come to a pylon you can look ahead and see the next pylon and so on.  The pylons are creative and fun and you just have to, because you want to, walk to the next one to see what it's been shaped into.

Hwaseong has used scupltures in the same way.  If you follow the line of sight from the boy carrying the fish in the above photo, you can see a couple sitting on a bench under the white canopy; this is the next scuplture.  When you get to this scuplture you can check what they are looking at, and no surprise, it's another sculpture.


In these examples, the visitor is engaged and wants to follow the route laid out for them.  I think the Hwaseong example is more effective as it leads the visitor through parks and past museums and through shopping and restaurant areas.  Whereas the Geelong example leads the visitor along the waterfront which is where a visitor would probably walk anyway; nonetheless, the fun and enticement is there.

So the project rolls on and these examples have started the creativity flowing.  I can't wait to see what the facilitation ends up with and find myself being lead down the path.


The storytelling part of the project is, well, another story.  Might have a look at that next time.

David Hancock is the visitor development manager for Hutt City, Wellington, New Zealand and would be delighted to receive comments on this or any other topic.
http://www.huttvalleynz.com/
http://www.facebook.com/HuttCity.Wellington