Guidelines for the Conception of a Wayfinding System for Refugee Camps
People in Rwanda are not used to streets signs and maps. Instead, they navigate their cities by walking towards tall and well-known buildings they know to be close to their destination and then figure out their ways from there.
We noticed a very similar pattern in South Africa and Ethiopia, even thought street signs are common in both of those countries. Walking in the general direction of a tall marker is straight-forward and something generally understood by people.
Our understanding of graphics and icons is not something natural and globally understood. Abstaraction seem not to be quite as widespread in many parts of the world.
Based on this knowledge, we gave up on trying to create icons people could understand and instead thought about how children learn to abstract things. One of the first things they learn to recognize are pictures. Usually at around two years kids will start to see the picture as a flat representation of a real world object. This ability is only shard with us by a select few animals. Shortly after, they start to recognize basic geometric shapes. And thats what we based our „Guidelines for a Conception of a Wayfinding System for Refugee Camps“ on.
Instead of signs we suggest tall beams to put a figurative pin on the map and provide high-visibility navigational aides. In addition to that we advocate the use of ribbons along the ground that lead to the aforementioned beams. These would allow people in close range of the facilities to quickly find the right building.
Art des Projekts: Bachelorarbeit, Visuelle Kommunikation
von Dimitri Wiss und Robert Baumgartnert
