Signage in an educational establishment with bar charts to indicate efficacy of wayfinding signage to navigation, in the foreground

Measuring design effectiveness

Date: 11 October 2018
Time: 6:00 pm – 8:30 pm
Alan Baxter Limited, London, United Kingdom
Past event

In a world driven by the availability of big data, clients increasingly expect evidence to underpin design choices as well as investment decisions. But design deals a lot in things that have always seemed somehow unmeasurable: how can we measure the seemingly ungraspable benefits that good design brings? Brand and marketing colleagues have a range of frameworks and tools that they routinely use to demonstrate the effectiveness of their work. What can we learn from them that is applicable to implementing the wayfinding strategy for a new and complex develop-ment? Just how do you evaluate the effectiveness of your solutions or measure their contribution to the bottom line? In this talk Andrew Barker, drawing on case studies, academic research, and best practice from other disciplines, discussed a range of approaches and techniques suited to measuring the effectiveness of design solutions in wayfinding projects. As well as providing some practical solutions, this highly interactive talk stimulated further discussion about how the wayfinding community can best work together the raise the profile of the discipline and provide clear evidence demonstrating the value of our work.

About our speaker

Andrew Barker – Andrew is an information designer and researcher, and an enthusiastic advocate for evidence-based design. He works mainly in designing wayfinding systems and document design. He is also just finishing his PhD examining the relationship between design and behaviour.

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