Wayshowing
Articles
“Effective Wayshowing: Helping Byway Travelers Take Home Special Memories,”
by David Dahlquist,
America’s Byways Resource Center; Vistas, September/October 2006
Wayshowing: Helping Byway Travelers Take Home Special Memories
Editor’s note: David Dahlquist is working with the America’s Byways Resource Center to coordinate Phase 1 of the Resource Center’s Wayshowing/Navigational Education Outreach Program. This project’s objective is to improve the traveler’s self-navigation of America’s Byways® through effective communications. A Project Management Plan to train and educate the byway community will be designed during Phase 1.
Wayfinding: The mental process that turns travel goals into decisions, actions and behaviors. A process of determining and following a path or route between an origin and destination. Travelers do this.
Wayshowing: The communication of information to aid travelers in getting desired goals, making decisions and taking appropriate actions. Byway providers do this.
Lasting memories are assured when travelers successfully find their way to your byway. (You also know what happens when they are not shown the way!)
This puts byway organizations in the memory-making business. Helping byway visitors access and participate in positive experiences and, in their doing so, acquire and retain rewarding memories of the special places of America. Big job, huh? You bet!
America’s Byways Resource Center, with the assistance of long-time byway planner David Dahlquist, is launching an initiative to make available to byway organizations the most up-to-date research, approaches, examples of access and practical abilities to wayfinding and wayshowing. Using the information can help increase the effectiveness of showing your travelers the way to experience your byway. This is the first of several articles on wayfinding and wayshowing.
Wayfinding. Wayshowing. Who does what?
Let’s first build a couple of foundations that will support this idea of showing the way. As someone who might be involved in helping people navigate to and through your byway, are you providing wayfinding or wayshowing assistance?
To understand the concept of Wayshowing versus Wayfinding, we think byway leaders should recognize that byway travelers (as well as prospective byway travelers) do the wayfinding. You and anyone else who prepares travel information, designs maps and travel brochures, plans or installs signs, or gives one-on-one travel directions to byway travelers provide Wayshowing for your travelers.
Wayfinding = Seeing
Wayshowing = Drawing
Wayfinding = Reading
Wayshowing = Writing
Wayfinding = Hearing
Wayshowing = Speaking
Wayfinding = Learning
Wayshowing = Teaching
Wayfinding = What byway users do
Wayshowing = What you do
Does wayfinding happen only when you’re lost?
No. In fact, the process of wayfinding ceases at the moment you realize or conclude you’re lost.
The activity of wayfinding by travelers (and, consequently, effective wayshowing by byways) begins at the moment a prospective byway traveler is presented with the opportunity to choose to travel on a particular byway. Wayshowing, what you provide, needs to be offered during the five stage of the byway experience.
Cautionary note: A gap in the continuous wayshowing your byway provides increases the risk of a “fatal dysfunction” occurring—any event that leads to a traveler concluding, “I don’t want to do that!” or, worse yet, “I won’t do that again!”
THE BYWAY EXPERIENCE: Five Stages
Choose…Prepare…Go/Do…Recall…Do Again
Stage: Choose
Description: The point at which a prospective traveler chooses from all the available options and competition that he or she would like to plan and prepare to take a byway-based trip.
Some common wayfinding needs: Where is the byway? What is there to see and do? How much time should/will it take?
Stage: Prepare
Description: The stage during which the prospective byway traveler plans and prepares for the trip.
Some common wayfinding needs: How will we get there? Where will we stay, eat and stop? How much time should we allot to travel to and on the byway? Where are the intrinsic qualities and attractions of the byway?
Stage: Go/Do
Description: This, of course is, the event itself and what will provide the great core memories to the traveler.
Some common wayfinding needs: Where are the entry points to the byway? How do we know this is a byway—something special? How do we stay on the route? How do we get back on the route if we get off the route? Where are the attractions along the route? Where can we get information along the route? Where do we get services?
Stage: Recall
Description: With a memorable byway travel event (Go/Do) we all need things that will help us recall those impressive sites, interpreted stories and personal experiences.
Some common wayfinding needs: What will help us recall the good times we had on the trip? Maps to refresh memories? Pictures of landmarks and travel companions? Where was the awesome overlook? Remember where we took that side trip and discovered the fossils?
Stage: Do Again
Description: This is perhaps the most important stage or behavior—providing people with the experience or incentive to:
1) Revisit the byway
2) Travel to a different byway and/or
3) Encourage someone else to visit the byway
Some common wayfinding needs: Where are those good maps we had from our last trip there? Where can we find another byway to explore? We need to show our friends where to go.
In short, the second foundation of this discussion on effectively helping travelers self-navigate your byway rests on the reality that wayshowing is a continuous process not simply limited to installing route signs or printing a map.
During the upcoming months look for additional opportunities to learn more about wayfinding by byway travelers and wayshowing by byway providers.
Here are ten tips (not intended to be an exhaustive list) that hopefully will offer ideas for improving your effectiveness in showing the way to and through your byway:
TIP #1: Don’t trust just anyone’s map. If you are building a travel itinerary or turn-by-turn route description for public consumption by using existing maps, assume that your resource maps are erroneous at best. Field verify any route description based on maps from secondary routes by driving the route in each of the byway’s directions. Check each side route to and from an attraction.
TIP #2: Less is more. Exercise caution in locating route markers. Too often, byway route markers are added to an already cluttered array of route number, junction markers, trailblazing signs and other critical traffic control devices.
TIP #3: People drive to stop. Many byways are collections of places where travelers are encouraged to stop, view a particular site and participate in an interpretive experience. Effective wayshowing is as much about guiding people along a designated route as it is about directing travelers to specific points where they must turn off or leave the main route and pause to take in the on-site experience. Good wayshowing helps the traveler find these off-route locations and returns the traveler to the main byway route.
TIP #4: Think of wayshowing as following a recipe of ingredients for a delicious dessert. In most cases a successful wayfinding experience can’t rely on a single type of media (maps, signs, brochures, websites, etc.) A combination of media needs to be available to assist travelers with inherently different preferences and travel abilities to enjoy a successful travel experience. And don’t forget to incorporate the rapidly growing reliance on electronic media.
TIP #5: Some people navigate with maps. Some people navigate with words. Some people navigate by the seat of their pants. Please recognize that many people have difficulty reading maps. Others live and die by maps. Others need highly visible landmarks to travel.
TIP #6: Don’t just trust yourself. Have someone who is not familiar with your byway get in the driver’s seat and follow your draft map or driving instructions. Pay close attention every time your guest driver hesitates or makes a wrong turn. Each one of those hesitations or wrong turns represents a probable disappointment of other travelers, and worse, a potential safety risk.
TIP #7: Make it personal. Consider the advantages of implementing the individual or unique identities—name and logo—for your byway in all forms of communication with your travelers. Consistent and repeated use of the byway’s name and logo in brochures, website, route markers, and wayside exhibits are tremendously successful wayshowing techniques. If your byway is nationally designated, please remember to use the America’s Byways® logo on your collateral materials and signage.
TIP #8: Plug into technology. Take advantage of consumer-based route-planning software. Many consumer-based software programs aid to planning and executing travel anywhere in the world. You can create a file that illustrates a byway route as well as attractions along the byway corridor. Post the file to your byway’s website for viewers to download and access with their version of one of these mapping programs. Travelers can then plan and track their trip using a GPS unit. With that GPS unit, they can visualize where they are along your route. These programs can be purchased almost anywhere. They’re also relatively inexpensive and easy to use.
TIP #9: Answer the big questions. Here are the big wayfinding questions people have: “Where an I now?” “Where can I go from here?” “What can I do there?” “How do I get back to where I was?” “How do I get out of here?” When you help byway travelers answer these questions for your byway, you have done your job!
Tip #10: From the Amazing but Unfortunately True Department. Too many frontline visitor center personnel have been heard saying, “We have a byway here? Never heard of it.” Please help to stamp out byway ignorance.
There you have it: 10 relevant and perhaps irreverent tips for improved wayshowing. We’re interested in hearing from you and your wayfinding and wayshowing experiences. E-mail David Dahlquist (ddahlquist@mchsi.com) with your stories of getting lost, as well as examples of highly effective examples of wayshowing. With your permission, we will share some of your examples with readers as part of our training materials.