Zern Liew writes an excellent article on signage design. He describes walking down Elizabeth Street in Sydney trying to find number 410, and gives some examples of what might work better, and best of all.
It is worse when you are driving down an unfamiliar street, especially at the end of a long stressful drive. Unknown territory, inadequate signage on top of heavy traffic and surrounded by impatient drivers. Ack.
What could be better? Basic learnability theory tells us that once people get to learn something, they don’t have to relearn it if it is reused regularly (I know this sounds like basic common sense, but it is rarely common amongst the average run of interface designers). Consistency breeds content - so if there were a mandatory standard national signage requirement, this would be a good start (because then we could research and find an optimal solution and change the standard if/when necessary). But… A national signage standard is not practical, so what else could be done?
Some form of easily readable street number would be a really good start. A readable number, street name and business name would be better still - yet how many businesses have these?
User-centred design 101 featured in the MIS magazine article on the PharmBiz project (Department of Health and Ageing) as follows:
Is your website user-centred?
Applying some key principles of user-centred design will help to increase your site’s usability and the satisfaction levels of your site’s visitors.
1. Take time to understand your target users - their needs, attitudes, expectations and capabilities.
2. Design features and content specifically for your users and the tasks they will need to accomplish.
3. Structure your site information and navigation in ways which will be logical to your users.
4. Make the site look and behave consistently throughout - this makes it much easier for your users to learn.
5. Simplify wherever possible and minimise unnecessary mental effort for users.
6. Use plain language written so that it can be easily understood by users - avoid legalese, bureaucratese and organisational jargon.
7. Structure and present your information so that it is easily scannable - layer information so that your users can choose the level of detail they need at any time.
8. Provide multiple ways of getting to information, to accommodate your users’ different searching and browsing habits and preferences.
9. Unless there are good reasons not to, use existing design conventions for placement of foundation items such as banners, navigation, search boxes and scroll bars.
10. Help your users to avoid errors through clear design - help them recover from errors through clear feedback.
The underlying principle behind number 7 above is visual hierarchy - make the important information stand out. Here’s an experiment for you - walk down a busy main street containing shops and other businesses - see how many signs give importance to that important information. What qualifies as important information? It could be one or more of:
- business name
- street number and name
- business type (if not immediately apparent)
- phone number
- hours of opening
- website/email address (if the business has an online component)
What you’ll probably find is that most businesses have the business name and perhaps a phone number. Some businesses show type in their name (”Julia’s Florist”) but that is usually the end of it. If service based businesses (like real estate) are moving to the internet, then the bricks-and-mortar companies that remain have to lift their game to remain relevant. I think that improved signage would be a good start.
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