Vall d'Hebron | Environmental Analysis & Wayfinding Briefing

Vall d’Hebron opens it’s door as a hospital in 1955 – offering an extended campus where healing, teaching and research are the main drivers of the area. Most buildings have been partially renovated leaving a very complex navigation experience unattended by generating confusion among all users. Furtheremore, important architectural modifications will take place before 2020 leading to an urgent analysis and improvement of their eclectic and DYI wayfinding system.

1 | The Challenge

How might we design and implement an efficient wayfinding system in order to reduce hidden barriers by improving the overall perceived experience that Vall d’Hebron is delivering?

2 | Insights

→ In order to keep up with the daily changes of the Hospital modularity is the key component of the wayfinding system to be implemented –  enabling a cheaper maintenance and more flexibility. 

→ This part of the hospital hosts users of different heights: adults and children. This second group requires a more playful, engaging and simplified signage system with a guiding storytelling. 

→ The use of icons provides a universal language for the multi-cultural users of the centre.

→ Distributing the different areas in a systematic way throughout all the identical floors will enable a quicker comprehension on how to navigate the space.

→ And finally, redundancy over cross-functional wayfinding channels will guide successfully all possible targets to their desired destination.

3 | The Final Product

We dedicated 6 months to interview all different “personas” that the hospital is reaching; running focus-groups with all their managers and social workers and designing 3 iterative prototyping sessions before elaborating a briefing for the Design Studio who was leading the implementation.