Hablamos Juntos In The News
Posted in Behavioral Science, Healthcare, Wayfinding Concept on June 17th, 2010 by Mark VanderKlipp – Be the first to comment
Corbin Design and its partner firm, Avenue ISR generated this report, soon to be released.
A recent article in the Kansas City Star illustrates a project that Corbin Design directed for Hablamos Juntos. Funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, we were engaged by the SEGD and Hablamos Juntos for a research and design recommendations process. We led the project in partnership with Avenue ISR to develop baseline research around how people with limited English proficiency (LEP) access health care, whether they speak another language or have physical limitations. In some cases, the patients in the test facilities were from cultures unfamiliar with western medical practices – definitely a challenge to reach and direct such diverse audiences!
The objective of this process is to develop a standardized set of universally recognized symbols to describe medical procedures common throughout the majority of healthcare institutions. The difficulty, of course, is employing imagery that is intuitive to a broad spectrum of hospital patients, staff and visitors. Our task was to design standards for applying these symbols to wayfinding signage, then test their effectiveness for the audiences in question.
The article does a great job of describing the process that Children’s Mercy is currently rolling out:
Children’s Mercy Hospital is installing new signs to make the complex easier to navigate
A quick summary of our research results:
- 92% of all subjects agreed that they could easily find their destinations using the symbols based wayfinding system
- People from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds (from English and Spanish to Somali and Khmer) were able to effectively use the symbols to navigate
- Low literacy populations navigated the hospital more efficiently as well
- Even for those with excellent English reading and comprehension, the symbol system served as an effective support to finding destinations.
Our work has been showcased as part of a series on “Placemaking” within Northwestern Michigan’s Second Wave online magazine. The article features several projects from our portfolio, and an explanation of the phrase “Good design goes unnoticed.”
We came across this gem on YouTube, an interview with our client Arthur Mullen, Director of the Mount Clemens DDA. Among the comments featured in this interview*:
“The wayfinding system is especially important because we have a lot of out of town visitors who are coming into the city and we have a couple different grid systems … and it makes getting around downtown for someone who’s… More...
For the Sept.-Oct. 2011 edition of Medical Construction & Design magazine, Corbin Design president Mark VanderKlipp researched and wrote an article that places wayfinding signage in context with the entire range of brand communications that a healthcare system engages. Using Scripps Health as a case study, the article addresses how internal teams can organize to best approach staff, volunteers, patients and visitors with simple messages that reflect an institution’s culture… More...
Heidi Jones
Hesper Smyth
Mark VanderKlipp
Rick Stringer