Airport Signage and Interaction Design Analysis
Khyati Trehan Interaction Design Graphic Design Semester V
Visual language
Airport signs & wayfinding systems guide users through the fairly complex set of airport customs and services. Creation of a wayfinding system in an airport and arriving at sequence of signs that provide spatial orientation which will have to guide thousands of visitors takes an in-depth case study of the visual environment, travellers stream or persona study, environmental elements, architecture, additional or peripheral services etc. A visual language binds all of these factors.
Vancouver International Airport The airport signages follow a language in terms of colour pallete and overall structure. Colour psychology is very effectively applied. Dark green evokes a mental picture of a pine forest and is very soothing to the eye - curtailing the stress that comes with long journeys. The yellow offers good contrast, and important factor for those visually challenged.
The airport extensively uses the digital signage system, introduced very recently. The network includes flight arrival and departure information displays, gate information screens, wayfinding displays and entertainment screens.
This color combination works only when a lot of daylight can enter the building and therefore heavily depends of the environment.
Signages at the Vancouver airport are multilingual and appear in the order of size language - proving that personas were given much importance. {The adjescent image uses Gurmukhi}.
Vancouver, is the 8th largest city of Canada and has a population constituting:
29.4% Chinese 5.7% Indians (mainly Punjabis)
Personas are fictitious characters that are created to represent the different user types within a targeted demographic that might use a site or product. Development of prior information is done by participatory interviews and other design research techniques.
A key feature of the digital deployment is that all of the facility maps, directional instructions and baggage claim information are shown in the language appropriate to the current flight schedule. For example, since the flight was arriving from Shanghai, information was shown in English and Chinese.
Shanghai Pundong International Airport
The airport uses a certain shade of blue that appears quite calming and this pallete extends over many touch points - from signages and check - in kiosk screens to the ceiling patterns.
The decision of having text first in Chinese and then in English is probably derived from the fact that not most of China is affluent in the former.
New Delhi Indira Gandhi International Airport
Even though the colour pallette included Black, Yellow and white - the ideal contrast combinations - this pallette was found mostly in navigatory signages with additional use of colours like red from time to time. Format and colour of instructional signages varied.
The use of digital interfaces in the airport was found to be moderately intensive and most signages were back lit. The order of the language used in all texts was of English first, and then the native language, Hindi - opposite to the sequence followed in the Shanghai airport.
Affordance
Visual cue that indicates an emphasis on the required operation or intended functions of a product. Affordance is also regarded as the potentiality of a product that can support user action without requiring user’s memory, inference and further interpretation. This was an attempt to identify different affordances through my journey and understand how the context of consumption within which a user operates is important.
New Delhi Airport
Form here plays an important role in the perceptible affordance of the object that helps regulate hand bag allowances in terms of dimensions. The rods act as skeletons to the bag and suggest the idea of a container so that the hand bag can be placed inside it and the user can judge its dimensions.
Perceptible affordance // Form
New Delhi Airport
The black attachment is hollow with a wide opening at the top whereas the end of the elastic has a protruding apparatus attached suggesting insertion.
Queue managers help facilitate customs by directing customers through various checkpoints. They are portable as well as flexible as the elastic can be detached easily and so their form affordance is useful to the airport authority.
Perceptible affordance // Form
New Delhi Airport
Perceptible affordance // Form & Position
The form of the handle on trolleys mimics impressions of fingers and comes across as something to be gripped.
Shanghai Airport
The tag is supposed to be wrapped around with one end and inserted into the slit and then turned again to lock around the circular cut. However, the piece of paper showed no clue and was difficult to use without
Hidden affordance
New Delhi Airport
False affordance
The failure here is evident - the intructional signage refers to the a section of the boarding pass that is nowhere to be found in the format of the pass in reality.
Shanghai Airport
Perceptible affordance// Form & Icon
The hollow circle suggests that it can contain something; in the case it can contain a glass. The form above the circle is also a visual clue as it points in the direction of the circle and defines the water outlet. The arrow icon, too is directly suggestive.
Vacouver Airport
Perceptible affordance// Form & Icon
Affordance many a times is based on past experiences. Since most people are familiar with the idea that the form of a regulator requires the protruding area to be held and turned, the object above works well. Also, since the icon is made on top below which a semicircular area is hollow, the user understands that a coin is to be inserted.
Repetition
Repetition of signages is important in a system as complex as the set of airport customs. It ensures that a vital piece of information doesn’t go missed. Signages imparting the same information are often found in different form, mostly likely to break the monotony while keeping the language of signage intact. Repetition is one of the strengths of digital signage and kiosks. Communicators can put a core group of messages relevant to users and keep them in a rotation.
New Delhi Airport
Check in kiosk code
The letter B is repeated by being positioned once way above eye level and one a little above eye level in different styles. Since the one close to the ceiling has to be viewed from a distance, it is backlit and uses heavy contrast. The user in this case can identify the entire row of check ins in several ways.
New Delhi Airport
Drinking Water Signage
A backlit version of a similar icon was places above the drinking waer area for distance viewing. The signage in the area varied in form and had the addition colour - red: which wasn’t a part of the overall colour language the airport followed.
New Delhi Airport
The signage appeared on the floor, on a standee, and on a pole standee - all in very different forms conveying the same message with varying additional information in a few.
Self Service check-in
New Delhi Airport
Gate No. Signage
A long panel hanging from the cieling contained gate number information and was fit for distance viewing. The same information appears close to the seating area above eye level. The type size was much smaller in this case and the board overall didn’t have high contrast. It is very likely that these decision were made after study of the position of the use with respect to the signage.
Peripheral & Supporting Services
These are services that aid the main set of customs the user goes through for in airports or are recreational in nature for the user’s other possible needs before or after the journey. These increase the number of signage requirements in airports significantly making the experience of processes in the airport non-linear. A large number of such services poses the threat of signage clutter and much confusion and so have to be dealt with carefully.
Check-in and boarding pass receival.
Main linear process
Security check
Departure Gate
Boarding
Baggage Claim
Examples: Evacuation plan chart, prepaid phone card kiosk, pay phone and fire alarm, post box, shopping bag purchase kiosk.
Vancouver Airport
Examples: Laptop and phone charging point, Dedicated lounge, Wifi username and password information, Free Battery charger, newspaper shelves.
Shanghai Airport
Examples: Signage for medical room and toilets, Time planner chart, immigration form, laptop charging station, signage for children’s play area and smoking room, recharge station.
Delhi Airport