Designing a Better Experience Across Every Hospital, From the Ground Up
The Challenge
Hospitals are difficult environments to navigate. They are large, unfamiliar, and often visited during moments of stress. Across the NSW Health system, inconsistent signage and a lack of clear strategy had created a fragmented experience for patients, visitors, and staff.
NSW Health wanted to shift the focus from quick fixes to long-term improvement. This meant building a framework that supported better decisions across the entire hospital journey. Rather than relying on more signage, the aim was to support smarter wayfinding through better planning, clearer communication, and more consistent delivery.
Project
NSW Health Wayfinding Guidelines
Client
NSW Health
Collaborators
Location
New South Wales, Australia
Size
Project Build Cost
Focus
Our Role
We wrote the original guidelines in 2014. Nearly a decade later, NSW Health asked us to lead the update. This reflected the trust built through long-term collaboration, and our reputation as specialists in hospital wayfinding and people-centred systems.
For the new edition, we developed a complete strategic framework that connects policy, design, and operations. The guidelines are practical and flexible, helping teams make good decisions in real-world conditions. Every section is grounded in evidence, from entrance strategy and naming conventions to environmental psychology, information design, and inclusive planning.
The content is structured to guide projects without prescribing every step. It supports hospitals of all sizes and types, and helps align consultants, architects, and managers around a shared wayfinding approach.
Following their release, the guidelines were adopted by the Australasian Health Facility Guidelines. They now shape hospital projects across Australia and New Zealand, not just New South Wales.
What We Learned
The release of these guidelines has already shaped new conversations across the health sector. We’ve seen first-hand how teams are using the material to plan, review, and rethink their approach to navigation.
We’ve also seen where challenges remain. The strongest outcomes happen when people understand the underlying principles, not just the final recommendations. That’s why the guidelines focus on mindset as well as method. They support long-term change by helping teams see wayfinding as a system that influences movement, experience, and behaviour.
The Outcome
The NSW Health Wayfinding Guidelines now serve as a shared foundation for consistent, user-focused decision-making across the public health system. They provide hospitals with tools to improve both the patient experience and the operational reality of navigating complex environments.
By authoring both the original and updated versions, we’ve helped shape hospital wayfinding at both state and (inter)national levels. The guidelines reflect two decades of experience and offer a clear, strategic path forward.
They are built to be applied, adapted, and extended. And they show what happens when experience, research, and real-world testing come together in one place.
