Wayfinding for a Three-Day Crafts Mela
The organising team of a three-day crafts mela expects 22,000 visitors on a 4-hectare ground with six zones and 140 numbered stalls. About 30% of visitors are first-timers. Many read Hindi or Gujarati but not English; a small number read little of any script. Around six wheelchair users and several parents with prams arrive each hour. Ground lighting is uneven and fails entirely in one corner after 7 pm. The signage budget is ₹60,000, and 40 volunteers will be on duty with printed clipboards that can be reprinted cheaply.
Proposal A: six large flex boards at the entrances, each carrying the full stall list and a map, all labels in English, cost ₹54,000. Proposal B: a colour-coded zone system - 12 mid-level boards with pictograms and zone colours, 40 floor decals with directional arrows, and a one-line script for volunteers; printed on reusable cloth banners, cost ₹57,000. It can be reused next year if zone names stay the same, but stall numbers change.
1. Evaluate both proposals against the audience, the lighting and the budget, and recommend one. Support the judgement with the numbers given.
Read the worked answer
Proposal A fails on audience. A single board listing 140 stalls is a document, not wayfinding: it asks a first-timer to read a dense list in English while standing at an entrance. Three groups are excluded - non-English readers, low-literacy visitors, and anyone in the dark corner after 7 pm, where a large board is unlit and unreadable.
Proposal B distributes the decision. Twelve boards mean a visitor is never more than a short walk from confirmation, which matters far more than completeness at the gate. Pictograms and zone colours work without reading. Forty floor decals address the actual failure point, which is the junction where people stop and turn.
Budget: A leaves ₹6,000 and B leaves ₹3,000 of the ₹60,000. Neither leaves much, but B's cloth banners are reusable, so next year's cost is reprinting the stall numbers only - a few thousand rupees - while A's flex is single-use.
Gaps in B that must be fixed inside the budget: no lighting allowance for the dark corner, no accessibility information, and no plan for the stall numbers changing. Recommend B with these three additions funded from the ₹3,000 plus savings on flex.
2. How would you solve the stall-number problem so the zone system survives to next year without reprinting banners?
Read the worked answer
Separate the permanent layer from the variable layer. Zone names, colours, pictograms and arrows are permanent: put them on the cloth banners. Stall numbers belong on a cheap, replaceable layer.
Mechanisms, in order of cost:
- Slotted number strips. A stitched clear sleeve at the foot of each board holding a printed strip listing that zone's stalls. Reprinting 12 strips costs a few hundred rupees and takes an hour.
- Per-stall plates. Small painted or printed plates on each stall itself, so the board need only say 'Zone B - stalls 21 to 48'. If numbering shifts within the same range, nothing at board level changes.
- Volunteer clipboard as the live layer. The 40 clipboards are already reprintable; give them the day's changes and treat them as the error-correction system.
Design rule: never print a number on the same substrate as the zone colour. Any number printed on a reusable banner converts a reusable asset into a yearly cost, which is exactly how the budget quietly doubles.
3. You can run one pre-print test with five visitors. What do you test, and what would make you change the design?
Read the worked answer
Test: a walk-through at dusk in the actual ground, not a table test with printed boards. Five participants: two who read no English, one low-literacy reader, one wheelchair user, one parent with a pram. Task: 'Start at the north gate and find stall 112 in Zone E.' The facilitator says nothing and does not point.
What to record:
- Time to reach the target, and every point where the participant stops or turns around.
- Whether they used colour, pictogram, arrow or text - ask afterwards, because stated and actual use differ.
- For the wheelchair user, the route taken and any decal or board placed where it blocks a turning circle.
- In the dark corner, whether the board is legible at three metres and whether the floor decal is visible underfoot.
Change triggers, fixed in advance: if three of five stop at the same junction, that junction needs a board. If anyone cannot name their zone colour after 30 seconds, the colour coding is too similar. If the dark corner fails legibility, money moves from a board to lighting before printing begins.