Healthcare Signage Design

Better wayfinding can provide patients and visitors confidence and certainty in healthcare spaces.

With the pace of change in the healthcare market, a focus on creating environments that promote human connection have driven the need for a more unified brand voice and comprehensive wayfinding strategy. Central to this approach is building a framework of user experience points throughout the journey from pre-arrival brand introduction to on-site lasting brand impressions. Examination through this lens allows insight into the experience of patients, visitors and staff and their unique physical, spatial, emotional and mental needs at each juncture, and that can be positively enhanced by a supportive built environment. 

By making the patient and visitor experience more intuitive and less stressful, a comprehensive and strategic wayfinding strategy can alleviate the anxiety that comes with uncertainty.

At RSM Design, our people-centered approach to wayfinding begins by identifying unique experience points within the patient and visitor journey where people engage directly with the healthcare brand by moving through or interacting with the built environment. Each step of that journey is an opportunity to empower patients and visitors with agency and give them choices that inspire confidence and create a more positive experience.

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These “experience points” along the journey fall into three main categories:

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Pre-Visit: Planning & First Brand Impressions

Because a patient’s typical experience with hospitals and clinics begins well before they visit, a good wayfinding strategy is not limited to creating clear information and intuitive visual cues within the space itself. It must also include interactive digital tools such as a wayfinding app and web presence that provide step by step instructions from driving to the final appointment destination. Comprehensive wayfinding also entails working with local municipalities to approve branded experience points on roadways and off-site locations.

These and other wayfinding strategies reinforce the healthcare provider’s brand identity and help realize their goals as they may improve the experience of patients and visitors.

The ideal pre-visit experience is developed alongside the on-site strategy. It not only informs patients and visitors of what to expect on arrival, but also orients them by integrating the wayfinding visual language throughout the site.

Experience Points: Brand, Planning, Travel, Campus Approach

On-Site: An Integrated Approach to Wayfinding

The transition from pre-visit to on-site experience must be as seamless as possible. From the moment patients and visitors enter the property, it should be clear what they need to do next. An effective wayfinding strategy provides a sense of certainty to patients and visitors by considering every aspect of that experience, including site design and architecture, landscape elements, vehicular traffic flow, parking, building identification, lobby orientation, interior navigation, and, notably, cultural context.

At every step, it is essential to empower patients and visitors with choices in how they receive the wayfinding information — even a subtle or unconscious choice can help create a more positive experience. Good on-site wayfinding doesn’t assume a particular “type” of patient. Rather, it accommodates people of all ages, abilities, and demographics by communicating information in multiple ways at once through color coding, alpha-numeric systems and graphic symbols, as well as opportunities for human interaction. This redundancy instills confidence and makes moving through a healthcare campus much more intuitive.

Effective information design is woven into the very fabric of the surrounding environment, and is ideally implemented in coordination with new buildings and/or landscapes. When that is not possible, it should reinforce the architecture and overall planning strategy to create memorable and user-friendly places. When these elements are properly integrated, patients and visitors can quickly and intuitively create mental maps to more easily find their way around large and complex spaces.  

Experience Points: Campus Arrival, Navigation & Parking, Building Entry Approach, Interior Entry Arrival, Destination Navigation & Arrival, Transformative Experiences

Post-Visit: Extending the Patient and Visitor Experience

Why does this extended experience matter? In all of RSM Design’s projects, we hope to combine certainty, variety, and delight. These three design principles create rich, layered experiences rooted in basic physical, emotional, and mental needs. Meeting these needs can create a sense of fulfillment that results in a more positive experience — and a less stressful one.

A wayfinding expert or architectural graphic designer can be most useful when involved early in the branding process. At RSM, we offer branding and design services in addition to our wayfinding and experience design work. This lets us help hospitals and healthcare providers refine their brand identity to improve visibility and the patient experience. These services include creating interactive exhibits, donor recognition, memorable landmarks, community programming, and sensory interaction.

Experience Points: Departure, Next Steps, and Lasting Impressions

The Proof is in the Patient Experience

In healthcare environments, a less stressed patient means a less stressed staff, which means quantifiably better service and peace of mind for everyone involved. At RSM Design, our work is based on proven, evidence-based design practices. We conduct observational research - tracking the movement of patients, visitors and staff through space. We consider everything from circulation, operations, approach, site lines, traffic studies, environmental impact and pedestrian flows. We hold workshops with the community of users and stakeholders to understand their perspectives and needs before arriving at solutions. We have designed a methodology for testing through prototypes and survey users about their experience. We learn what works, what doesn’t, and how best to incorporate those lessons into our final strategy.

We have seen the difference that comprehensive and strategic wayfinding can make firsthand — in both smaller healthcare facilities, such the University of the Pacific School of Dentistry and larger healthcare campuses like the Texas Medical Center. From single clinics to entire healthcare systems, effective wayfinding is essential for creating a truly transformative patient experience.

Looking to transform your patient experience and reinforce your brand strategy? Click here to view our previous work in healthcare design.

Most of us experience transformative moments through travel, art, music, human relationships, nature, cultural and spiritual enrichment and we emerge as better people with the desire to recreate them. A truly transformative experience prompts a meaningful and lasting change in one's life.  We’ve all had them to some degree and they occur mostly at the subconscious level yet have profound impacts on us.  Can we even really articulate what we felt during or after that awe inspiring moment or do we just feel imprinted in some way that resets our perspective and the lens through which we experience life? At RSM Design, we are continually exploring the intersection of human behavior and design to ensure that we create emotionally resonant experiences through our work.

There is actually a neurological process taking place in the brain, specifically as it relates to our experiences in the natural and built environment, the places and spaces we inhabit each day. For this reason, healers and caretakers in healthcare are increasingly recognizing the impact and benefits of nature. According to, A Prescription for Nature, PaRx, an evidence-based nature prescription program that allows doctors to prescribe annual national park passes and weekly time in nature:

"People who spend at least two hours in nature each week report significantly better health and wellbeing."

"Backed by hundreds of studies over several decades, research suggests that connecting to nature is one of the best things you can do to improve your health." - A Prescription for Nature

Similarly, the concept of neuromorphic architecture explores how the built environment affects human emotions, behavioral, physiological responses and social relationships. We think, we feel and the body responds with a cascade of chemical and physiological responses. As part of our shared effort to improve human health and inspire healing, there is increasing momentum to design architectural features around and within buildings that support this process. An increasing amount of research establishes links between health outcomes and one’s experience of the built environment. As experiential designers, we can support elevated emotions through spaces filled with sensory rich features such as nature, art, music, intuitive wayfinding, communal space and human connection. At RSM Design, we connect people to places through branded environments, placemaking, wayfinding and signage.  Our goal is to move from transactional environments to transformative experiences.

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Re-Making the Human Healthcare Experience

An inspiring example of a transformative approach to healthcare design is the new UCSF Helen Diller Medical Center at Parnassus Heights in San Francisco designed by Herzog de Meuron and HDR.

“The Hospital of the Future must be a new kind of hospital. A more human experience. A natural environment. It’s a place that invites people in—patients, providers, and learners—and reflects the culture and diversity of its community.”

UCSF underwent a visioning process to support a more imaginative based approach unencumbered by the boundaries of current day practices.  Experience guidelines were created and emotional benchmarks established throughout all transition points from arrival through recovery.  

Identifying how we want an environment to emotionally impact people is a powerful starting point for meeting the human needs of those we are designing for.  To be effective, RSM Design applies a Principle Centered Design approach to engage at every human level—the body, the mind, the heart and the spirit. It’s a whole-person approach that radically defines the work we do.  

The new hospital is envisioned to be a “Healing Habitat”, a holistic experience and environment that fosters wellness for all.  It will bring the outdoors inside with nature filled spaces, open and filled with natural light, views of outside, comfortable rooms that inspire healing, well thought out amenities and events for the community.

“The new hospital will provide an optimal healing environment that addresses social, psychological, spiritual, and behavioral components of health in one place” - UCSF

Transactional Environments to Transformative Experiences

The significant impact we can make as environmental graphic designers is to create transformative experiences. Architectural graphic design creates a strong sense of place, fulfills human needs, helps users find their way, and communicates a building’s narrative, fostering a strong connection between the person and place. To be effective, our work has to engage at every human level—the body, the mind, the heart, and the spirit.

The ultimate aim of these places is to encourage visitors to stay longer, enjoy the journey and feel connected and ultimately transformed after they have visited. Visitors gain a sense of place and community and identify with the environment as their own. They then want to share memories with others and encourage them to visit as well.

‍Cultural institutions are a good example of spaces that create resonance and memorable experiences. They instill reflection and quiet interaction. We often feel engaged mentally, emotionally, spiritually and physically when located within a park setting that allows for movement and gathering spaces.

At RSM Design, we work to design for health and wellbeing across all projects, including the hospital environment. In our Health & Wellness Practice, our focus is to reimagine and redefine the patient experience through our collaborative planning and design process to create a truly transformational experience. What better place than where we go to heal, to infuse a sense of elevated emotions, connection and possibility through the use of nature inspired forms, graphics, art and interactive moments to share personal healing stories and encourage community.

Landmarks become intuitive visual cues that serve as wayfinding elements reducing the amount of traditional signage and visual overload. Clear and cohesive wayfinding that is effective and planned strategically can significantly lower the level of stress a visitor brings to an appointment and increase satisfaction with the overall experience.

Wayfinding can be approachable and empowering when we think outside of the box while still designing for certainty and orientation. Engaging and welcoming signage supports a life affirming experience and a sense of possibility.

Places have the power to become part of a person’s identity, particularly when they are authentic, when they stand for something. Making that connection requires a deeper level of sensitivity and understanding.  The relationship of architecture and graphic design is a symbiotic alliance that orients, informs, and delights. It’s a whole-person approach that radically defines the work we do at RSM Design.

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Designing Healthcare Environments Based in Human Needs

RSM Design creates identity, wayfinding strategy and design programs that address the unique challenges and opportunities within the healthcare sector. Whether for a hospital campus, wellness center, or education campus, RSM Design begins with the end in mind, developing a meticulous and thorough research, strategy and design platform. Our team creates architectural graphic design solutions that are both functional and innovative, providing a sense of ease and comfort to visitors and patients, focusing on improving the current state of health and wellness environments.

Designing an Individual Health Journey

A strategy rooted in a ‘people-first’, holistic needs journey allows us to diagnose before we prescribe a solution that creates a future state understanding before we put pen to paper. Through the use of interviews, outreach and workshops our team is able to facilitate a design process that identifies the potential health journeys and all the points of brand or wayfinding needs along those paths. These touchpoints allow us to step into the shoes of the patient, family or staff to build an intuitive path to follow, ensuring that the guidance is more than a point A to B experience. Our goal is to utlize the following principles to create a cognitive map of one’s journey:

• Transform the patient experience into a guest experience (Hospitality Quotient - HQ)

• Friendly, inviting, comfortable (tap into other human needs)

• Engaging each journey as a personal approach to design and sensitivity

• Fundamental aspects of human needs

• Heightened sensitive, stress or unsuredness level

Reflecting Brand Values and Voice

Each healthcare provider, educational campus or private facility has a brand identity that must be woven into the patient (guest) journey. These brand defining touch points along paths of decision-making must reflect the values and voice of that brand to the patient, family or staff. The logo, core values and brand promise are both tangible and intangible elements that immediately create a perception of care, thoughtfulness and comfort within an environment. Our creative team creates wayfinding and master signage systems that carry the institution’s brand identity throughout the healthcare campus and makes a potentially stressful visit to a relaxing and empowering experience. Through creative placemaking and environmental graphic design, RSM Design transforms even the most confusing or complicated healthcare spaces into engaging guest experiences. We have developed a methodology for these touchpoints we like to call: CERTAINTY, VARIETY AND DELIGHT

CERTAINTY

Within every environment one must have a level of certainty to confirm that one has arrived to one’s destination or that you are indeed on the right path. As we all know, if life has too much certainty, even in a healthcare setting, the feeling of a sterile and systemic care environment is pervasive, hence the need for a bit of uncertaintly or variety.

VARIETY

Our goal is explore the variety of the environment and its paths within an experience to replace a sign with something memorable, a landmark that can identify a destination, decision point or a place of rest. Within a patient journey there are many points where you must identify, inform, direct or remind someone of where they are in their journey. We call this cognitive mapping where we must help create a mental map to allow an understanding of where I am, where I am going and how do I get back. Layering variety within this allows us to create memorable moments whether that is a colored wall or an amazing curated artful element so that place becomes a mental landmark.

DELIGHT

Another important ingredient we explore in wayfinding is DELIGHT. We understand that the majority of healthcare experiences come with an element of anxiety, stress and fear. Our goal is to align our strategy and design to occur in parallel with those feelings to counteract and encourage the need for comfort to be fulfilled. We all crave delight even in the most difficult of times in our life. Delight can be an ingredient to aid in overcoming these trials by creating quiet, energy, surprise or even humor along one’s path.