Arrival directory
Who is in the building, on what floor, and which way to the lifts. Usually portrait, usually the largest screen in the scheme, and increasingly interactive in larger buildings.
Solutions
Digital Wayfinding and Directories
Wayfinding is designed by walking the route a visitor takes, not by looking at a floor plan. The plan shows you a building you already understand. The walk shows you the three points where a first-time visitor stops, looks around and gets it wrong.
Guide
Decision points, not directories
Most buildings solve wayfinding by putting a large directory near the door and nothing anywhere else. That helps at the moment of arrival and then abandons people exactly where they need help: at the lift lobby on the wrong floor, at the point where a corridor splits, at the end of a run of doors that skips the number they are looking for.
A digital scheme is worth doing because it can say different things in different places. The screen at the entrance orients; the screen at the lift confirms; the panel at the door names the room and says whether it is free. The value is in the sequence, and the sequence comes from walking it.
The pieces of a scheme
What makes a digital scheme better than signs
- A department moves and every screen is correct the same afternoon, not at the next signage order
- A route can be closed for maintenance and redirected instantly, then put back
- Room availability is live, so nobody stands outside a booked room reading a printed timetable
- Emergency and evacuation messaging can take over every screen in the building at once
- Accessible routes can be shown as a first-class option rather than a footnote
- Content can change by time of day, which printed signage physically cannot do
Questions people actually ask
Do we still need printed signage?
Yes, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling screens. Statutory signage, exit routes and fire information must remain physical and must work with the power off. Digital wayfinding handles the things that change; printed signage handles the things that must never fail. We design around that split rather than pretending it does not exist.
Can the screens show a live map with directions from where I am standing?
They can, and in a large complex building it is genuinely useful. In a building most people can cross in ninety seconds it is a feature that impresses in the demonstration and gets used twice. We will tell you honestly which one you have, because interactive mapping is a meaningful part of the budget.
How do the room panels know what is booked?
They read your calendar system directly, usually Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, so the panel and the booking are always the same information. Where the platform supports it, staff can also book the room on the panel itself, which is what actually stops people holding meetings in rooms somebody else reserved.
Next
Related
Start a project
Tell us about the space. We will tell you what belongs in it.
A first conversation costs you nothing and usually takes twenty minutes. Bring a photo of the wall and a rough idea of what you want it to do.
- A written specification you can price against anyone
- The platform we would run, named before you sign
- Hardware and content costed separately, so you can see both
- No obligation, and no pressure to buy screens you do not need