Presentation
If You’ve Reached the Trauma Bay, You’ve Gone Too Far: Human Factors Approaches to Hospital Wayfinding
DescriptionHospitals are among the most challenging environments to navigate, often with sprawling layouts, and multiple entry points as well as relatively immobile customers. For staff, the ability to locate patients, colleagues, and resources without delay is critical to timely care delivery. For patients and families, disorientation can heighten stress during already difficult circumstances. Breakdowns in wayfinding not only affect efficiency but can also potentially lead to adverse clinical outcomes and a worsened care experience.
HF principles can help transform hospital wayfinding from a reactive signage exercise into a proactive, human-centered design process. Embedding HFE into healthcare environments reduces risk, improves efficiency, and ensures that complex spaces support, rather than hinder, those who depend on them to deliver care to the patients they serve.
Our work contributes to this gap by demonstrating how HF methods can be applied to hospital wayfinding under real-world constraints. Specifically, we show how rapid, participatory approaches can improve the navigability of hospital care areas. Our team created improvements in two hospital projects:
1. Emergency Department Expansion (ED): Here, the HF team entered late in construction but still delivered meaningful improvements to room numbering, care area identification, and wayfinding signage design. Key Takeaways will include the context of late involvement and tight timeline, information on methods such as cognitive walk-throughs, overlay maps, sticky-note prototyping and mock-up signage, collaborative design. Finally, we will discuss outcomes such as improved logical room numbering, signage improvements, and staff acceptance
2. Cardiovascular Institute Tower: An ongoing project integrating wayfinding solutions across the patient journey from patient instructions to physical signage and parking navigation.
Both projects demonstrate the versatility of HF when applied to building environment design and show how rapid, participatory approaches can deliver value even under constraints. Key Takeaways will include describing Human Centered methods such as patient journey mapping from portal to appointment, development of “You Are Here” maps, and the integration of outdoor and indoor signage. Finally, we will discuss a planned future validation using eye-tracking and an extended patient journey mapping project.
The central message is that human factors adds value to hospital environments by making spaces navigable, logical, and supportive for all users. This value extends beyond traditional patient safety and quality domains, demonstrating that HF should be embedded in healthcare design processes from the start.
Key takeaways for attendees:
1. Wayfinding is not just a design issue, it directly affects timeliness of care, staff efficiency, and patient & family experience.
2. Even when involvement comes late and data collection is limited; rapid implementation of HF can yield actionable improvements.
3. Replicability of methods such as sticky-note prototyping, overlay mapping, and user walk-throughs which are low-resource, high-value methods that other HF practitioners can adapt.
4. Future directions for this work including incorporating validation methods (e.g., eye-tracking), aligning with patient journey mapping initiatives, and advocating for earlier HF involvement in architecture and facility design.
This presentation positions HF as an essential contributor to healthcare environment design to improve patient outcomes, system efficiency, and experiences for everyone navigating them.
HF principles can help transform hospital wayfinding from a reactive signage exercise into a proactive, human-centered design process. Embedding HFE into healthcare environments reduces risk, improves efficiency, and ensures that complex spaces support, rather than hinder, those who depend on them to deliver care to the patients they serve.
Our work contributes to this gap by demonstrating how HF methods can be applied to hospital wayfinding under real-world constraints. Specifically, we show how rapid, participatory approaches can improve the navigability of hospital care areas. Our team created improvements in two hospital projects:
1. Emergency Department Expansion (ED): Here, the HF team entered late in construction but still delivered meaningful improvements to room numbering, care area identification, and wayfinding signage design. Key Takeaways will include the context of late involvement and tight timeline, information on methods such as cognitive walk-throughs, overlay maps, sticky-note prototyping and mock-up signage, collaborative design. Finally, we will discuss outcomes such as improved logical room numbering, signage improvements, and staff acceptance
2. Cardiovascular Institute Tower: An ongoing project integrating wayfinding solutions across the patient journey from patient instructions to physical signage and parking navigation.
Both projects demonstrate the versatility of HF when applied to building environment design and show how rapid, participatory approaches can deliver value even under constraints. Key Takeaways will include describing Human Centered methods such as patient journey mapping from portal to appointment, development of “You Are Here” maps, and the integration of outdoor and indoor signage. Finally, we will discuss a planned future validation using eye-tracking and an extended patient journey mapping project.
The central message is that human factors adds value to hospital environments by making spaces navigable, logical, and supportive for all users. This value extends beyond traditional patient safety and quality domains, demonstrating that HF should be embedded in healthcare design processes from the start.
Key takeaways for attendees:
1. Wayfinding is not just a design issue, it directly affects timeliness of care, staff efficiency, and patient & family experience.
2. Even when involvement comes late and data collection is limited; rapid implementation of HF can yield actionable improvements.
3. Replicability of methods such as sticky-note prototyping, overlay mapping, and user walk-throughs which are low-resource, high-value methods that other HF practitioners can adapt.
4. Future directions for this work including incorporating validation methods (e.g., eye-tracking), aligning with patient journey mapping initiatives, and advocating for earlier HF involvement in architecture and facility design.
This presentation positions HF as an essential contributor to healthcare environment design to improve patient outcomes, system efficiency, and experiences for everyone navigating them.
Event Type
Oral Presentations
TimeTuesday, March 248:30am - 9:00am EDT
LocationMurray Hill West
Hospital Environments