Printed Navigation signs are things of the past. Given the ever-changing business situation and increasing costs of printing and placement, digitalization looks like the core solution to this problem. 

Digital transformation is the hottest trend of the past years. The pandemic has given rise to the development of companies and businesses willing to invest in digitalization and digital transformation. And it’s not only about the Covid-19 (while it played a vital role in business transformation) or process automation. 

Modern technologies are about cost-efficiency, greater customer or user experience, loyalty, and even standard of living. Poor Wayfinding leads to increased client time on the premises, wasted time on the part of the staff and additional costs, because staff, helping clients find their way, don’t have time to fulfil their main responsibilities.

Indoor navigation with augmented reality helps visitors find the shortest or predefined route to their indoor location of interest. Compared to plain navigation solutions, indoor AR navigation is capable of visualizing digital content on the way to a destination: object information, advertisements, and other data.

In this article, we’ll go through approaches and technologies improving wayfinding in public places and reducing associated costs.

Costs savings on indoor wayfinding

Every public place from a park or shopping mall to the office or especially a hospital requires a wayfinding system (or signs) to help visitors orient at the location and find directions easier and faster. 

Traditional signs and wayfinding kiosks require lots of resources, including money to be spent on production and installation. When time past, you will need to spend extra for updates due to significant wear and any additional changes required because of changes in rearrangement, redistribution of offices, cabinets, meeting rooms etc.  

If the entire floor needs updating, or even more the whole building, then visitors will see incorrect signs for a long time and you will need a certain time for updates. 

Finding signs looks like a quest for a visitor, not to mention people with disabilities, so you need to invest extra costs into administrator and concierge service to help people orient in the building. 

There are much more expenses if we talk about wayfinding kiosks: 

• Expensive equipment and its installation
• Wayfinding kiosk hardware + tech support
• Wayfinding administrators (and their amount depends on the size of location and number of kiosks) etc.

All of these expenses don’t affect customer experience. Digitalization is a chance to save thousands of dollars (or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in big locations) spending on outdated systems/approaches. We identified the top 3 technologies with substantial benefits yet quite easy implementation which will help to unload the company’s budget. 

Technologies to replace outdated wayfinding

3D mapping

The first technology is 3D mapping (or 3D map crowdsourcing that is much more cost-efficient). The technology helps to create a digital twin of any location capturing all objects (including furniture, equipment, etc.) that enable you to add any digital content, including wayfinding signs, information places, tutorials (for any devices or equipment) and many other things. And manage its positioning. For example, the installed specific projection equipment will display the image on the floor and walls of the room. These can be signs, arrows for tracking the route of viewing, as well as advertising information. All pointers are conveniently managed remotely through the administrative panel. 

It makes it easy to update the digital twin if any decorations change and ensure easier access to the content and its management. Nothing like “written” plans of the building.

Indoor navigation and positioning

The use of augmented reality for navigation has a positive effect on the development of the facility and user loyalty. Users find the route they are interested in much faster and get to the desired point in the building. It’s possible to display the necessary information along the path of the visitor based on his position, for example, advertising. Moreover, in an interactive mode (room gamification), visitors can follow the route on their own or with tips from a virtual guide. 

The most useful and important thing in wayfinding digitalization — precise indoor navigation. This technology enables you to build various navigation routes through the location (based on digital twin) and make them available for visitors. With indoor navigation, visitors won’t waste their time (and your resources) searching for signs to get to the point of interest. They’ll be directed right to the point by mobile phones, AR glasses or robots if they are available. In addition to saving costs, indoor navigation technology improves customer experience saving their time on searching for directions, giving more support during the whole route.

XR (extended reality)

The last but definitely not the least thing on our list is extended reality technologies — AR and VR. XR gamifies user experience, visualizes digital content making it more clear and easier to perceive. It plays a vital role in indoor navigation because AR creates another interactive dimension to visualize navigation routes, etc.

AR navigation allows you to create navigation labels and interactive prompts, giving visual information about each marked object. For example, Huawei is using augmented reality to highlight the service’s performance both indoor and outdoor.

AR indoor navigation application allows you to transfer all navigation signs into virtual space. As a bonus, you will get an improved customer experience, which positively affects the level of loyalty and business profitability.

Extra reasons to empower wayfinding with indoor navigation, XR and 3D mapping

Along with saving costs on traditional wayfinding and improving the whole process, the following technologies solve much more issues of outdated wayfinding. 

First, they minimize crowds near signs and queues to wayfinding kiosks (it’s relevant to the Covid-19 situation). This allows you to adhere to the social distance rule and reduces the possibility of the spread of the coronavirus. Visitors don’t touch the kiosk and use the navigation on their own devices.  

Don’t forget about carrying for the environment. Many companies and businesses follow the trend of sustainability and the use of wayfinding with indoor navigation, XR and 3D mapping allows stopping using printed signs, plastic billboards, tons of printed paper etc. Digital content doesn’t require natural resources. 

Wayfinding with AR indoor navigation is more accessible for people with disabilities. People with hearing, visual and other problems get extra support (they don’t need to search for signs or ask strangers to direct them, or try to read printed text) — everything is in their smartphone in a convenient and simple form.

Conclusion

Leveraging XR, indoor navigation and 3D map crowdsourcing in wayfinding increases company profits, saves significant costs on physical signs, administrators and helps visitors to get a better experience. 

These technologies give more new opportunities for facility owners and managers like location-based maintenance reports, AR location-based advertising which allows improving other spheres of facility management.