Wayfinding for modern healthcare: A participatory approach to designing a wayfinding system in a Chinese Hospital Setting

Abstract Healthcare spaces are often massive in scale and constantly under renovation, which may cause disorientation and, therefore, high levels of anxiety and stress for first-time visitors. In China, many hospitals lack a good wayfinding system: directions are often given verbally by hospital staff and healthcare seekers are often unsure when they have arrived at their destination. Designers are under pressure to develop a sustainable wayfinding system that takes users’ needs into consideration. To tackle this issue, participatory design (PD) was applied in the Shanghai Oncology Hospital (SOH), China. For this project, a diverse group of stakeholders, who are often excluded from the process of designing solutions in healthcare, were recruited. Through this project, new insights into the Participatory Design approach were generated that can be applied to future wayfinding projects within the Chinese healthcare industry.