I Was Wrong About 'Wayfinding'

Occasionally, I will see a word that I've never read before.

This happened to me recently when I started reading a letter to the editor in the Southeast Missourian publicizing the fact that the city of Cape Girardeau was conducting a "comprehensive wayfinding review."

I'd never heard of the word "wayfinding," but I thought it had a rather PR-ish ring to it. I tend to be suspicious about words of that nature.

At first I thought "wayfinding" might have something to do with what attendees to Weight Watchers might do at their weekly meeting. It makes sense that if you're trying to lose a few pounds, that you'd have a weekly "weigh finding." That would be a nice PR-ish synonym for "getting on the scale."

But considering that this was on the editorial page of the newspaper and was spelled "way" rather than "weigh," I quickly decided that "wayfinding" had nothing to do with dieting. I read on.

The letter extolled the fact that thanks to a grant from the National Park Service the city of Cape is able to conduct a "comprehensive, citywide wayfinding review." We're spending $40,000 on this review. I knew this because I'd already written a couple blogs regarding the review when I knew it as a signage study. I thought it was a waste of tax dollars.

But after reading this entire letter to the editor, I realized that I have possibly been misleading readers about this expenditure and might actually be wrong about the whole situation.

Oh sure, I knew the city was spending money on a signage study and that the funds weren't coming out of our local taxpayer coffers. No, it was a federal grant so this money was coming out of our national taxpayer coffers. That's different. That's OK. It's not completely free money, but it practically is.

Since this is federal money, if we average the cost of this part of the grant over the entire population of the United States, it works out to be only about 1/100 of a penny per person. That's so negligible that I might even volunteer to pay for 500 of my closest friends. I think they're worth at least a nickel.

No, how I've possible misguided readers was by describing this expenditure as just a simple signage study. Stupid me. Thanks to this letter, I now see the error in my ways. This is a wayfinding study, and wayfinding is way more complicated than just signs.

According to the letter, wayfinding is "not just about signs, but about using all visual information -- signage, maps, landmarks and icons -- to steer pedestrians and vehicles through unfamiliar environments."

It was just silly of me to think that we have anyone locally or even regionally who can grasp a concept that complex.

We may have some people who know about signage and we may have a few specialists who can create accurate and detailed maps and we may have a person or two who can identify buildings that could be considered landmarks and we may even have a handful of folks with the talent to create simple, but easy to understand icons, but to have somebody locally or regionally who could be an expert in all four of those areas, well, that's like some kind of a pipe dream.

So, I admit that I was wrong at judging this need. It was wise of the city of Cape to hire an out-of-state company to consult on such matters and since Florida is practically Mecca when it comes to all things touristy, I'm confident that the firm that was awarded the contract was the smart choice.

Because what the city needs isn't something as simple as plain old directional signs as I originally thought.

No, what the city needs are really, really nice-looking directional signs.

That's different and that's what wayfinding is all about.

For those of you curious about this issue, a Request for Proposal legal notice ran in the Southeast Missourian July 14, 15 and 16 soliciting bids for "plans for the wayfinding system."

The city received four proposals.

A representative of the City shared the following information when I requested a list of the bidders and bid amounts.

Mr. Hollerbach,

We interviewed each of the consultants. As part of the interview process we had set questions and ranked each of the consultants to make our determination on who was the most qualified for this project.