Although shopping malls have seen a significant drop in customer traffic since their heyday in the 1980s, I miss one of their hallmark features: the wayfinder.
As in the photo above, a wayfinder is a map of a location or facility. The map usually depicts a pin marked with YOU ARE HERE and a variety of destinations for the park, hospital, office building or mall.
The wayfinder didn't start in hospitals or shopping malls. The helpful map has Icelandic origins and has helped many people locate a position of origin and a destination on a map.
Such a tool would be so incredibly helpful in real life.
Wouldn't it be great if a person with a chronic condition could find a pin on a map that says, YOU ARE HERE.
It would be orienting! It would be grounding in some way to know you are now in this space that you haven't navigated before and what might be available to you as a consumer or community constituent.
After finding the YOU ARE HERE pin, imagine being able to visually scroll through available resources like stores in a mall listed on the wayfinder. The stores are typically listed alphabetically in each zone of the mall.
Abercrombie
Bath and Body Works
Claire's...
How incredibly helpful to apply the same characteristics of a wayfinder in real life with conditions characterized by chronicity. Imagine a website or an app. Create resources in various formats like video, audio, blog, text, and translated languages.
Arthritis (General)
Back pain
COPD
Depression
...
Rheumatoid Arthritis Seropositive or Seronegative
What if each of us could understand where we are now and identify where we would like to go in the knowledge journey of a condition?
What if we didn't have to find all of the information on our own in order to be a competent partner to a physician in our health care?
What if we had a wayfinder for this journey?
"Oh I see. I am HERE, but want to understand how inflammation is affected by exercise...so I will get there by taking this route."
or
"I am HERE, but need to know which supplements are most effective against inflammation of internal organs...so I will gain this knowledge by taking this route."
The end of the story is that no such wayfinder exists. Not even Google can reveal which steps to take or how to get from point A to point B, so it takes longer to identify WHERE I AM, WHAT I NEED, and HOW TO GET THERE.
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